Horst Dreitzel - The Reception of Hobbes in The Political Philosophy of The Early German Enlightenment

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History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 255–289
The reception of Hobbes in the political

philosophy of the early German Enlightenment$
Horst Dreitzel
Faculty of Historical Science and Philosophy, University of Bielefeld, P.O. Box 10 01 31,
33501 Bielefeld, Germany
1. The philosophical context
The ‘new’ philosophy emanating from the Central German universities of

Frankfurt an der Oder, Leipzig, Halle, and Jena which permeated Protestant
Germany in the period 1680–1720, did not employ the term ‘Aufklarung’ . (Enlight-
enment) as a self-description. It saw itself, rather, as ‘eclectic philosophy’,1 and this
despite the fact that, in his great polemic waged between 1673 and 1686 against
traditional, late humanist schools of thought—the philosophia christiana, Aristote-
lian scholasticism, and Greek doctrine—Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694) had
extensively used the imagery of light and darkness: from the ‘regnum tenebrarum’
and its ‘arcana status’ on the one hand, to the ‘light of truth’, which overcomes all
violence and intrigue, on the other. He did this in clear awareness of Thomas
Hobbes’ much more theologically loaded conception of the ‘Kingdome of
Darknesse’, to which the English philosopher had assigned religious superstition,
as well as false philosophy.2 Pufendorf’s eclectic model of a method which worked
$
This is a revised text of a paper presented at a conference on ‘The early Enlightenment in Germany’ at
The European Institute for Research on the Enlightenment and Pietism (Europ.aische Institut fur .
Aufkl.arungs -und Pietismusforschung) in Halle in April 1993, published in Politisches Denken, Jahrbuch
2001, ed. Karl Graf Ballestrem, Volker Gerhardt, Henning Ottmann and Martyn P. Thompson,
(Stuttgart–Weimar, 2001), pp. 134–174. The English translation was made by Ulrich Adam and Nigel
DeSouza, and was revised by Brian Young.
1
Cf. Horst Dreitzel, ‘Zur Entwicklung und Eigenart der eklektischen Philosophie’, Zeitschrift fur .
Historische Forschung 18 (1991), 281–343. The extensive investigation made by Michael Albrecht,
Eklektik. Eine Begriffsgeschichte mit Hinweisen auf die Philosophie- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Stuttgart,
1994, (Quaestiones, Vol. 5) is critical of and complementary to this study. Still indispensable is Max
.
Wundt, Die deutsche Schulphilosophie im Zeitalter der Aufklarung .
(Tubingen, 1945), pp. 19–121. A recent
thematically limited overview can be found in Werner Schneider, ‘Der Begriff der Philosophie’, in his
.
Hoffnung auf Vernunft. Aufklarungsphilosophie in Deutschland (Hamburg, 1990), pp. 111–156.
2
Samuel Pufendorf used the idea of the ‘regnum tenebrarum’ most particualrly in his polemic against
Valentin Alberti; see, for example, his Specimen controversiarum circa jus naturale nuper motarum, ch. 4,
n. 10 (in Samuel Pufendorf, Eris Scandica, ed. Gottfried Mascovius, [Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig,
0191-6599/03/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0191-6599(03)00003-2
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256 H. Dreitzel / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 255–289
for the unbiased application of the knowledge which could be derived from all
‘schools’ and philosophers proved formative for legal and social philosophy; he did
not, however, create a symbolic, unifying conceptual scheme for the new philosophy
as a whole.
Like all historical terms not derived from proper names, the concept of ‘eclectic
philosophy’ rendered possible, on the one hand, a strictly historical identification of
an actual philosophical school, and on the other, a means of locating a particular
feature which was common to otherwise very different historical phenonema. In
origin, the term ‘eclectic philosophy’ was a product of the late humanist revival of
ancient schools of philosophy, analogous to the revival of Platonism, Aristotelian-
ism, Scepticism, and Stoicism made by Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), and of the
Epicureanism of Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) and Hobbes. It was the Dutch
humanist, philosopher, and Arminian theologian Gerhard Johannes Voss (1577–
1649) who had devised the term, in connection with the teachings of Potamon (and
following Diogenes Laertius’ history of philosophy): Voss had fixed its meaning
more in accord with methodical and formal criteria, than with specific dogmas.
Subsequently, in his Historia critica philosophiae (1742–1744)—the eclectic
school’s great history of philosophy—Johann Jacob Brucker employed the concept
in a three-fold manner. He used it to designate, firstly, the school of Potamon, which
he characterized as Neoplatonic; secondly, all those philosophers, who, since the
Renaissance, had developed teachings independent of the ancient and medieval
philosophical schools; and, finally, those German philosophers who identified
themselves under this banner, and who worked in the radius of Christian Thomasius
(1655–1728), Johann Franz Buddeus (1667–1729), Andreas Rudiger . (1673–1731),
Johann Georg Walch (1693–1775), Friedrich August Muller . (1684–1761), and
Christian Crusius (1715–1775). For all their differences on particulars, these three
groups of philosophers agreed on the formal principles of philosophising, and they
even shared certain fundamental assumptions. Of primary importance were the
principle of thinking for oneself (as opposed to an attachment to philosophical
schools or authorities); the desire for free communication; the collective and
progressive development of knowledge; the independence of different fields of
knowledge in method and structure, with empiricism and probability acting as the
defining criteria for the majority of the sciences; and the precedence of practical
philosophy, which was understood as being concerned with norm-bound freedom
and usefulness-orientated conduct. All these principles doubtless entitle these
philosophers to be counted as part of the Enlightenment, even though they still
connected the autonomy of human beings, in a traditional way, with both natural
theology and an acceptance of Christian revelation. As a result of requirements made
by the community and morality, they also drew the boundaries of the individual in
(footnote continued)
1759]). For Hobbes’s use of the term, see Leviathan (London,1651), p. 4: ‘Of the Kingdome of Darknesse’.
The decisive step towards the modern concept of ‘Aufkl.arung’ was the transfer of metaphors of light/
darkness, and illuminaton/obfuscation, from the context of Platonic philosophy and spiritualism, to the
rationalism of ‘natural reason’.
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H. Dreitzel / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 255–289 257
respect to freedom of social action and communication much more narrowly than
was then customary at this time. In much the same way, they also emphasised the
limits of the conditio humana more sharply. Their notion of a restricted conditio
humana also entailed other fundamental assumptions. Despite their revalorization of
‘probable’ ways of knowledge in the ‘sciences’, the empiricism that they deployed
against metaphysical rationalism signified a restriction of the human capacity for
moral knowledge. For them, such knowledge amounted to the basic understanding
of ethical norms as laws imposed by a God who limited human autonomy.
‘Eclectic philosophy’ was interpreted as a European movement—the reception of
the philosophy of John Locke occurred within its framework. It opposed
metaphysical rationalism in the tradition of scholastic Aristotelianism. It likewise
stood in opposition both to Cartesianism and to Spinoza; and its disputes with
Christian Wolff (1679–1759) affirmed this style of opposition. Wolff was,
incidentally, characterised by Brucker as a Cartesian who had demonstrated his
‘philosophical freedom’ by making, as his primary field of study, practical
philosophy, a field which Descartes had not mentioned.3 Wolff’s connection with
Leibniz, by contrast, was of secondary importance to Brucker, since Leibniz was not
seen as part of the tradition of rationalistic systematic philosophy. Among other
reasons for this assumption regarding Leibniz, were the facts that his monadology
was still unknown, and that his legal philosophy was interpreted as being in line with
that of Pufendorf.
This short overview of the philosophy of the early German Enlightenment has
served to define the setting for possible receptions of Hobbes. It needs to be rounded
out, however, in one essential point: besides the dominant ‘eclectic philosophy’ there
were philosophers in Germany who followed other western European ‘schools’
which had already made a break with late humanist philosophy, scholasticism,
Aristotelianism, and politica christiana. There were even followers of Descartes, for
instance, in Leipzig, such as Andreas Petermann (1649–1703), and in Halle, such as
Johannes Sperlette (1661–1725);4 there were also isolated followers of Spinoza;5 and
there was at least one philosopher in Germany who openly declared his loyalty to
Hobbes: the historian and theologian Johann Christoph Becmann (1641–1717), who
worked at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder.
3
Johann Jacob Brucker, Historia critica philosophiae (Leipzig, 1744), vol. 4, part. 2, p. 272: the influence
of eclectic philosophy supplanted Cartesianism in Germany; ‘et hoc pacto factum quoque, cum illustrius
Christianus Wolfius, Cartesiana vestigia secuturus, moralem doctrinam a Cartesio derelictam excolere
statuisset, ipse eclective tandem, non vero Cartesiane philosophatus est’.
4
It is not known whether the German Cartesians developed a specific political theory. Johannes
Sperlette, in his Philosophia moralis christiana et civilis (Berlin, 1696), understood ethics as a theory of
perfection (‘Bonum naturale est cuiuslibet rei perfectio ipsam naturaliter perficiens’), wher he emphasised
freedom as a specific capacity (potentia) of the will, and natural right as divine law imprinted in reason and
not derivable from the ‘nature’ of human beings; self-preservation is a part of this law, which is directed as
a whole towards the preservation of humankind: ‘Lex naturalis propria vita tuenda et conservanda est [y]
ad salutem communitatis omnium hominum, quae non potest curari, nisi in quantum singuli homines de
sua vita et salute sunt solliciti’ (p. 85). He developed a classical doctrine of virtue.
5
.
Cf. Winfried Schroder, .
Spinoza in der deutschen Fruhaufkl .
arung .
(Wurzburg, 1987).
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Becmann belonged, like Pufendorf, to the first generation of German Protestant

thinkers who engaged profoundly with Hobbes. Their disputes, however, must be
seen against the background of the wider discussions within traditional philosophy
and theology in which predominant critical-polemical arguments continued to exert
an influence. I shall, consequently, divide my observations on the reception of
Hobbes in early Enlightenment Germany into three parts. First, I will outline the
most important arguments of the critique launched by the traditional schools of
political philosophy in the 17th century. Secondly, I will discuss how Hobbes was
taken up by Becmann and Pufendorf. Thirdly, I will look at Hobbes’ influence on the
early Enlightenment, on ‘eclectic philosophy’, and on the empirical/anthropological
philosophy developed in Christian Thomasius’ late works as a reaction to Wolff. In
conclusion, I will summarise the major themes which are to be found in the reception
of Hobbes.
2. First reactions to Hobbes in Germany: Aristotelianism, natural law theory,

philosophia christiana
The reception of Hobbes’ social philosophy in the second half of the 17th century
occurred chiefly within three contexts: (a) political Aristotelianism; (b) natural law
theory (above all the reception of the ideas of Hugo Grotius); and (c) the
theological–philosophical disputes concerning ‘atheism’ and ‘indifferentism’.6
(a) The reaction to Hobbes of the political thinkers in the tradition of late
humanist Aristotelianism is best observed in through the example of Herman
Conring (1606–1681), professor of politics and medicine in Helmstedt:7
Hobbes philosophises in the Elementa and De Cive in an outrageous manner when
he grounds sovereignty as a whole in the most powerful authority and explains
hatred or enmity between human beings as the basis of the government of the
state. Which upright person would expound something so preposterous? The
author appears to deserve the hatred of all.8
6
.
Christoph Link, Herrschaftsordnung und burgerliche .
Freiheit. Grenzen der Staatsgewalt in der alteren
.
deutschen Staatsrechtslehre (Wien-Koln-Graz, 1979), analyses natural law theories of the state since
Pufendorf as a series of reactions to Hobbes’ conception of the ‘total state’ (pp. 19–202). For a discussion
of moral and legal philosophy, see Werner Schneider, Naturrecht und Liebesethik. Zur Geschichte der
praktischen Philosophie im Hinblick auf Christian Thomasius (Hildesheim, 1971), pp. 62–96. On theological
reactions, see Hans Leube, ‘Die Bek.ampfung des Atheismus in der deutschen lutherischen Kirche des 17.
. Kirchengeschichte, 43 (1924), 227–244, and Hans-Martin Barth, Atheismus
Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift fur
.
und Orthodoxie. Analysen und Modelle christlicher Apologetik im 17. Jahrhundert (Gottingen, 1971).
7
See the collection Hermann Conring. Beitrage . zu Leben und Werk, ed. Michael Stolleis, Historische
Forschungen (23) 1983. For political Aristotelianism, see Horst Dreitzel, ‘Hermann Conring und die
politische Wissenschaft seiner Zeit’, ibid., pp. 135–172, and ‘Der politische Aristotelismus in der
politischen Philosophie Deutschlands im 17. Jahrhundert’, Aristotelismus und Renaissance. In memoriam
.
Charles B. Schmitt, Wolfenbutteler Forschungen 40 (1988), 163–192.
8
Conringiana epistolica, ed. Christoph Heinrich Ritmeier, (Helmstedt, 1708), p. 19; reprinted in Opera
omnia, ed. J. W. Goebel, (Braunschweig, 1730; reprint: Aalen, 1973), VI, 562: ‘Hobbes elementa [et] de cive
impie philosophantur, dum jus regendi omne ex potentia praevalente suspendunt, et odium seu simultates
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This sharp condemnation, although formulated in a letter, stands out from

Conring’s more differentiated comments on other political philosophers, such as
Machiavelli, Bodin, Lipsius, and Pufendorf, whose views he recognised as a partial
contribution to political philosophy, even if he still rejected them. Moreover, he was
also generally open to new ideas as can be seen, for instance, in his praise for Francis
Bacon, Grotius’ juridical writings, Thomas Browne’s Religio medici (1642), and
Pufendorf’s Elementa jurisprudentiae universales (1661). Comparable, above all, is his
critique of Descartes9 and of the Paracelsian School of Medicine. The simple
condemnation of Hobbes must be seen, however, against the background of
Conring’s attempt to found an independent Aristotelian science of politics, with a
differentiated epistemology and scientific doctrine, on the one hand, and
fundamental anthropological assumptions, on the other.10 His specific conception
of the problem of politics can be characterised as one free of metaphysics, and as an
empirical rationalism more conscious of its own limits. It fully distinguished itself
from the contemporary fashion for the mathematical-geometrical method,11 and it
emphatically warned against the ‘Metabasis eis allo genos’, especially the transfer of
methods and knowledge from natural philosophy. At the same time, this conception
stressed the necessary connection to the facts of the political world as these had been
transmitted by the past and and were experienceable in the present, whilst being
sharply critical of the ‘Empirici’, who, working without analysis of causes and
general structures, translated observations into maxims.12 Conring condemned the
idea that one could confirm hypotheses merely by explaining ‘phenomena’ through
them: false assumptions could also lead to conclusions, which agreed with observable
facts.13 ‘Politics’ also needed, as causal analysis implied, to appeal to the four causes
of Aristotelian method, albeit in expanded and differentiated form. The assumption
of a prepolitical state of war and a fear-induced contract of subjection, which
Conring identified with Epicurus’s contract doctrine,14 stood in contrast to his social
anthropology. The latter contained two dominant assumptions: the fundamental
‘socialitas’ (sociability) of human beings, and their striving not only for
humanas pro fundamento habent civilis regiminis. Quis bonus ferat haec paradoxa? Autor dignus videtur
quem odio omnium excipiant’. For other important opinions, see: ‘De civili prudentia’, ch. 2, n. 11 (Opera
III, 287); ibid., ch. 14, n. 105 (Opera III, 421); Conringiana epistolica: Opera VI, 575, 610, 613.
9
Cf. the letters in Opera VI, 559 (Religio medici); 562 and 575 (Bacon); 505, 573, 614 (Pufendorf,
Elementa); 560, 573, 575, 591, 614 (Descartes). For Grotius, a discussion of the, Disputatio de jure (1638),
see Opera VI, 64: ‘vir in comparabilis’; ibid., 187, 622, 572, among others.
10
On this see esp. De civili prudentia liber unus, (Helmstedt, 1662); also in Opera III, 280–421, esp. chs.
5–10.
11
Extensively in Disputatio de unitate et distinctione scientiarum (1675) in Opera VI, 337–343; ‘Praefatio’
to B. Viotti, De demonstratione, ed. A. Froeling, (Helmstedt, 1661) in Opera VI, 397–402; ‘Praefatio de
doctrina pathologica’ to Phillipp Salmuth, Observationum medicarum centuriae tres posthumae,
(Braunschweig, 1648) in Opera VII, 354–59.
12
Cf. ‘Praefatio de historiarum, Germanorum imprimis, studiis’ to G. C. Tacitus, De moribus
Germanorum, (Helmstedt, 1635), in Opera V, 253–59.
13
‘Praefatio’ to B. Viotti (see f.n. 12), pp. 399–400.
14
De civili prudentia, ch. 2, n. 11 (Opera III, 287).
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self-preservation, but also for ‘perfectio’, that is, the good life. Conring thus criticised
the confining of politics to self-preservation and the preservation of one’s condition
or status (‘reason of state’).15 The definition of these principles was to be drawn from
the experiences of history and the present, as well as from wisdom acquired in the
accomplishment of contemporary tasks. Consequently, Conring criticised the
constitutional dogmatism of the monarchomachs as as much he did the dogmatism
of the absolute monarchy defended by Bodin and Hobbes. The final criterion for the
different political constitutions was the harmony of the respective interests and needs
of the ‘civitas’ (society), which was recognisable in the tacit or explicit consent to its
ruling political authority. The stability of political rule grew according to its ability
to recognize the interests of citizens and subjects, as well as of other communities:
justice was a necessary consequence of ‘socialitas’ in which ‘utilitas’ and ‘honestum’
were not to be separated. (Incidentally, Conring defended the Dutch Revolt, just as
he did the English Parliament in its resistance to the ‘legitimate’ king.) This
conception corresponded to the constitutional relativism and piecemeal pragmatism
of positive law characteristic of the German Empire. With its consistent
subordination of law to politics, however, it stood in tension with natural law
theory qua the metaphysics of jurisprudence. But it shared with the latter the
rejection of the dogmatism of the state as sovereign power, and stressed its
rootedness in the more deep-seated process of the development of society as a whole.
Conring also sought another solution for the relationship of church and state from
that of Hobbes, who, with reference to the Jewish tradition, called for the unity and
subjugation of the church under the sovereign. Conring, in contrast, distinguished
between natural religion, necessary for the preservation of social–political order, and
revealed religion, which focused on salvation in the next world. Natural religion,
implicit in most pagan cults and present within Christianity, was to be preserved by
the state through its support, control, and jurisdiction. As for the rest, complete
freedom of conscience and tolerance was to apply to all religions and churches in this
framework.16
(b) In his De jure belli et pacis (1625), Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) had already
laid down the framework which was subsequently to be applied and strengthened
in the interpretation of Hobbes within natural law philosophy.17 In the
15
Besides the dispute with Machiavellianism and reason of state, see also Conring’s new edition, with
commentary, of C. Scoppius, Paedia politices, (Helmstedt, 1663) in Opera III, 47–87: ‘Nec enim finis
unicus politici est status conservatio, sed felicitas civilis societatis, qui revera exercitio virtutis cum rerum
sufficientia conjuncto’ (p. 52, n. 6).
16
See esp. Exercitatio politica de majestatis civilis autoritate et officia circa sacra (1645) in Opera IV, 615–
43; Exercitatio politica de majestate eiusque juribus circa sacra et profana potissimis (1669) in Opera IV,
605–15. Cf., in this connection, my study ‘Gewissensfreiheit und soziale Ordnung. Religionstoleranz als
Problem der politischen Theorie am Ausgang des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 36
(1995), 3–34.
17
For the reception of Grotius’ De jure belli et pacis, see Ernst Reibstein’s overview: ‘Deutsche Grotius-
Kommentare bis zu Christian Wolff’, Zeitschrift fur . auslandisches
. .
Recht und Volkerrecht, 15 (1953–1954)
.
76–102; on the university lectures, see Gunther Hoffmann-Loerzer, Studien zu Hugo Grotius, (Ph.D.
Dissertation, Frankfurt am Main, 1971), pp. 248–275. For an example of such a text, see Samuel Rachel,
M.T. Ciceronis De Officiis Libri tres Commentarius, quo omnia ad juris naturae principia cumprimis
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preface,18 he attacked the identification of the just with the useful, of which view he
named Carneades (in accordance with Cicero’s and Lactantius’ accounts) the chief
representative. He criticised the inadequacy of the conception of natural right—
following Stoic teaching—which had been based only on the ‘natura prima’ of man,
that is, his instinctual structure, which harmonised with all living beings
to preserve oneself and to love what is useful to one’s status and its preservation,
and, at the same time, to prevent one’s destruction and everything which appears
to promote it. [y] In this first nature there is nothing which condemns war; rather
it promotes war in every way because the latter’s goal—the preservation of life
and health as well as the defence and acquisition of useful goods—fully
corresponds with that first nature.19
Only the ‘second nature’ of human beings, which encompasses reason and
sociability, establishes the basic rules of justice, the ‘jus suum cuique tribuere’, ‘for
the aim of society is that through common action and harmony every individual be
secure’, namely, in his right to life, health, freedom, and property. ‘It is thus not
revocatur, cum aliorum Philosophorum, praecipue Peripateticorum placitis conferuntur, illustrantur et partim
emendentur (Frankfurt and Kiel, 1668). The commentary emerges from lectures on Grotius, De jure belli et
pacis, given at Helmstedt University. Rachel was called to Kiel for the founding of the university, and to
take over a professorship in natural and international law. Ibid., p. 13: ‘Si qui sunt, qui summum bonum
non honestate, sed sola utilitate definiant et his dogmatibus ac hypothesi consentanea vitam vivent, hi
quidem sublata omni bonorum jurium atque officiorum communione ad civilem aliamve societatem
ineptissemi sunt [y] Apparet hinc: quam imprudenter hanc oppinionem recoxerint et civilis societatis
fundamentum constituerint utilitatem Thomas Hobbes et qui ei adstipulantur sorte alii’.
18
Hugo Grotius, De jure belli et pacis (1625), Prolegomena; Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones, Bk. 5, ch.
16, on Carneades: ‘Jura sibi homines pro utilitate sancisse, sc. varia pro moribus; et apud eos pro
temporibus saepe mutata; jus autem naturale est nullum. Omnes et homines et alias animantes ad utilitates
suas natura docente fieri; proinde aut nullum esse justitiam, aut si sit aliqua, summam esse stultitiam;
quoniam sibi nocet, alienis commodis consulens. Omnibus populis, qui florescent imperio, et Romanis
quoque ipsis, qui totius orbis potirentur, si justi velint esse, si aliena restituant, ad casas esse redeundum’.
In addition to lines from Horace’s satires, citations from Thucydides as well belong to the topoi (Melier
Dialogue, Bk. 5, n. 85ff; Euphemos’ speech, Bk. 6, n. 82ff); cf. also Samuel Pufendorf, De jure naturae et
gentium (1672), Bk. 2, ch. 3, n. 10.
19
Ibid., Bk. 1, ch. 2, n. 1: ‘Prima natura vocat, quod simulatque natum est animal, ipsi sibi conciliatur et
commendatur ad se conservandum atque ad suum statum et ad ea, quae conservantia sunt ejus status,
diligenda: alienatur autem ab interitu iisque rebus, quae interitum videantur affere’. In this section Grotius
developed the principles of a utilitarian law and its further development: ‘sequitur in examinando jure
naturae primum vivendum, quid illis naturae initiis congruat, deinde veniendum ad illud, quod quamquam
post oritur, dignius tamen est; neque sumendum tantum, si detur, sed omnimodo expetendum’. The
grounding of natural law in that which nature teaches to all living beings was often characterised as the
natural law of jurists (i.e., of Roman law) according to the Institutions, Bk. 1, tit. 2, and Digests, Bk. 1,
tit. 1, n. 1 (Ulpian). What was there characterised as the ‘law of nations’ (‘jus gentium est, quo gentes
humanae utuntur; quod a naturali recedere facile intellegere licet, quia illud omnibus animalibus, hoc solis
hominibus inter se commune sit’) was, by comparison, consistently recognised by theologians and
philosophers as the only ‘natural law’ because ‘law’, in any case, only befitted men. Cf., for example,
Pufendorf, De jure naturae et gentium (1672), Bk. 1, ch. 3, ns. 2, 3.
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contrary to the nature of society that each should follow his own interests as long as
the laws of others are not violated in the process.’20 The ‘dictamen rectae rationis’ is
protected as ‘law’, that is in its character as a commandment, through natural
theology. The claim that ‘rights’ and ‘laws’ befit human beings alone had a long
tradition in humanist jurisprudence.
Corresponding to this framework were the classic reproaches held against Hobbes:
that he held human beings to be animals (naturalism); that he abolished all natural
law qua binding norms in the law of nations, and in the relationship between
authorities and subjects; that he destroyed its foundation in natural religion; that the
state of nature as one of a war of all against all was a hypothetical construct which
failed to correspond to human nature; and that the derivation of the state from fear
and the desire for self-preservation alone led to paradoxical results which virtually
destroy peace and the certainty of the law.21 German authors stressed Hobbes’
political intentions, his reaction to the civil war, his polemic against anti-monarchical
and democratic rebels, and his defence of absolute monarchy; but they also
emphasised that he sought to achieve his goal by the wrong means. Some authors
strove for an objective and unbiased exposition of his doctrine, demonstrating an
intensive engagement with De cive and Leviathan.22 The Herborn philosopher and
theologian Samuel Andre.a (1652–1699), for example, held that Hobbes’s success lay
in the precision and system of his arguments, in his ‘libertinism’, and in his defence of
absolutism. Nevertheless, Hobbes’s state authority, which stood outside every legal
system, was criticised without exception as ‘despotism’; he was frequently considered
to be a believer in ‘Machiavellianism’, that is, as an apologist for tyranny.23 The
20
The principle of ‘socialitas’ always included the principle of self-preservation and the ‘natural rights’
of the individual, although these were limited. In his first system of natural law, Samuel Pufendorf put
forth two basic laws of natural right (‘leges naturae fundamentales’): ‘ut quilibet vitam et membra sua
quantum potest tuatur seque ac sua conservat—ut ne perturbet societatem humanam’, which he then
summarised: ‘ut ita quisque conservare studeat, ne societas inter homines turbetur’; Hobbes, Pufendorf
claimed, had only recognised the first part of this rule (Elementorum juris prudentiae universalis libri II, The
Hague, 1660, Obs. 4, ns. 4ff.). Later, however, the distribution of weight shifted: ‘Hactenus homo se ipsum
conservare tenetur, quatenus Dei servus et societatis humanae pars est, cui sese uti bene jussu Dei
praestare debet’ (Apologia pro se et suo libro, n. 33, Eris Scandica, f.n. 2). In the reception of Pufendorf,
then, it means: ‘Homo tenetur dona sua facultatesque excolere, ut idoneum fiat societatis membrum’
(Andreas Adam Hochstetter, Collegium Pufendorfianum, Tubingen, . 1710, p. 161).
21
For examples, see: Johann Georg Neumann, Disputatio philosophica de jure naturae Hobbesiano
(Wittenberg, 1683); Samuel Andre.a, Disputatio politica discutiens fundamenta politicae Hobbesianae
(Herborn, 1672); Adam Rechenberg, Thomae Hobbesii Eurema compendiarum in religione christiana novum
de uno tantum fidei articulo ad salutem necessario discussum, (Leipzig, 1674), esp. ch. 1, where n. 4 refers
expressly to Grotius.
22
Andre.a, Disputatio (n. 10) clearly summarises the first two books of De cive as the foundational
representation of Hobbes’s legal and state theory in 295 theses divided into the state of nature, natural
right, state structure, theory of revolt, concept of law, etc.; Adam Rechenberg, in a similar way, compiles
his theological statements following the example of John Templer, Idea Theologiae Levathianis (London,
1673). An extensive exposition can also be found in August Friedrich Glafey, Vollstandige. Geschichte des
Rechts der Vernunft (Leipzig, 1739), pp. 138–188, which includes many citations, examines the work of
opponents, and offers an extensive bibliography; see J. J. Brucker, Historia critica, n. 3, pp. 150–190.
23
.
On the concept of ‘Machiavellianism’ cf. Horst Dreitzel, Monarchiebegriffe in der Furstengesellschaft
(Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 1991), pp. 253–77. Kant borrowed this interpretation of Hobbes from
ARTICLE IN PRESS
value of ‘fundamental laws’, the legitimacy of limited monarchy, the legal obligation
of the sovereign to the ‘vis directiva legis’, the people’s right of revolt in extreme
cases (if the sovereign becomes an enemy of the people through his behaviour),
natural right as the principle of the law of nations and the law of contract outside the
sphere of activity of the sovereign—essential elements in the structure of the old
German Empire—were all defended as an aspect of the claim of the ‘prepolitical’,
obligatory, and natural law of ‘socialitas’.
(c) Next to the reproach for his support for ‘despotism’, Hobbes was accused of
‘atheism’ and ‘indifferentism’, that is, indifference towards the degree of truth of
various religious dogmas. Even the reception of Grotius’ natural law theory was
governed primarily by the aim of rendering it compatible with the comprehensive
social and juridical theory of the philosophia christiana. This philosophia christiana
interpreted natural law as originating from the state of innocence of human beings,
from the principle of love, or from the decalogue, in short, from an ontological
theory of justice which also encompassed God—with the ultimate goal of proving,
against Grotius’ claim of the independent existence of a ‘lex Christi’, the agreement
rather of the latter with natural law, thereby establishing the unity of ethical law.24
Even Pufendorf and his followers, who based natural law exclusively on the
knowledge of ‘natural reason’, endowed religion in the form of natural theology with
a far greater significance than Grotius had given it, as they interpreted reason in the
sense of ‘voluntarism’ only as an innerworldly, contingent fact of creation, and not in
the sense of Grotius’ scholastic realism as a ‘lex aeterna’ by which even God is
bound, and which would, therefore, be binding even for an atheist. Leibniz and
Christian Wolff, however, followed this tradition of the autonomy of ontologically
.
Gottfried Achenwall, Juris naturalis pars posterior (5th edn., Gottingen, 1763, n. 206). Cf. his observation
on Achenwall’s handbook of natural law (Gesammelte Werke, ed. Preussischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften (Berlin-Leipzig, 1934), XIX, 416, n. 7499) on ‘Machiavellistis, qui opinantur, populum
erga principem teneri oboedientia mere passiva’: ‘Hobbesianismus’.
24
The most significant reaction to the philosophia christiana in Germany was Samuel Strimesius,
Praxiologia apodictica seu Philosophia moralis demonstrativa, Pithanologiae Hobbesianae opposita
(Frankfurt an Oder, 1677). In addition, see Strimesius, Origines morales, seu Dissertationes aliquot
selectiores, vera moralium fundamenta complexae (Frankfurt an Oder, 1679); Johann Andreas Osiander,
.
Typus legis naturae (Tubingen, 1669); Samuel Rachel, De jure naturae et gentium dissertationes (Kiel,
1676). Cf. Hans-Peter Schneider, Justitia universalis. Quellenstudium zur Geschichte des ‘christlichen
Naturrechts’ bei Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Frankfurt am Main, 1967), pp. 151–158, 208–222, 264–273.
Philosophia christiana distinguished itself from moral theology by not connecting moral norms of natural
law to the doctrine of salvation. Rather, it treated elements of Christian revelation (such as the ten
commandments) as the better interpretation of rudimentary norms which were also knowable by reason.
Moral theology, in contrast, discussed them as part of the ‘ordo salutis’. Since Georg Calixt (1614–56), the
principle had prevailed of working out moral theology as a theory of norms for the ‘born again’ (homo
renatus). This conception was followed not only by most orthodox theologians, but also by pietists such as
Philipp Jakob Spener, and the moral theologians of the early Enlightenment, especially Johannes
Franciscus Buddeus and Christian August Crusius. The best guide is still Christian Ernst Luthard,
Geschichte der christlichen Ethik seit der Reformation (Leipzig, 1893), pp. 187ff, 203ff, and 407ff; much
more concise is Christian Frey, Die Ethik des Protestantismus von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart
.
(Gutersloh, 1989), pp. 83ff.
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understood reason vis-a" -vis the God of creation.25 The relating of Hobbes to
Epicurean doctrine26 which had been taken up by the Leipzig historian of
philosophy, Jacob Thomasius (1622–1684), as well as by Pufendorf (following his
friend Gassendi), stamped Hobbes, in accordance with a long tradition, an atheist.
Meticulous analyses of his philosophical and theological doctrines (which drew on
English authors such as John Templer and John Bramhall), provided an account not
only of his biblical criticism and his criticism of basic elements of natural theology,
such as belief in immortality, but also of his religious elevation of the state, which
was simultaneously both the church and empire of Christ, of the priesthood of the
king, as well as of the reduction of salvation-bringing faith to the formula (which
was, in the end, only relevant as an inward opinion): ‘Jesus is Christ’. Lutheran
authors especially rejected Hobbes’s identification of church and state (for all the
emphasis on the cura religionis magistratus). They objected to the disappearance of
the independence of dogmas, sacraments, and church in the face of the will of state
and, above all, they opposed the dismantling of the formula that the obligation of
the subject to obey God is greater than that to obey the state (even if these authors
still strictly opposed active resistance against the state on religious grounds).27 Some
of Hobbes’s other claims, for example that the sovereign could not rule over the
thoughts and inner faith of his subjects, were common knowledge at the time.
Pufendorf remained within this framework even when he demanded the distinction
in ‘Staatskirchenrecht’ (the law governing relations between church and state)
between the ‘religio naturalis’ necessary to the state, and the autonomous ‘religio
revelata’. He thus broke with the conception of the Christian state, and paved the
way for collegialism. In contrast, Arminianism—widespread, above all, through the
25
The conflict over the proposition that even God is bound by the law of reason (Grotius, De jure belli et
pacis (1625), Bk. 1, ch. 1, n. 9) was the primary subject of Pufendorf’s dispute with Valentin Veltheim and
Johann Joachim Zentrav, cf. Pufendorf, Specimen controversiarum, (see n. 2), ch. 4, ns. 3–8, ns. 24ff and
Specilegium controversiarum Circa jus naturae ipsi motarum, ch. 1. His thesis was: ‘Deum non principaliter
propter essentiam, sed propter potestatem, voluntatem et benificia coli’. For the rise and discussion of this
thesis until Grotius see James St. Leger, The ‘Etiamsi Daremus’ of Hugo Grotius (Rome, 1962).
26
Specimen controversiarum (see f.n. 2), ch. 1, n. 6; extensively Otto Mencken, Dissertatio de Hobbesii
Epicuraeismo ex eiusdem libri de cive demonstrato (Leipzig, 1668); Jacob Thomasius, ‘De statu naturali
adversus Hobbesium. Programma XIX, 16. Januar 1661’, Dissertationes LXIII varii argumenti magnam
partem ad historiam philosophicam et ecclesiasticam pertinentes (Halle, 1693); David Georg Morhof,
.
Polyhistor literarius (1687), (4th edn., Lubeck, 1747), on Hobbes: ‘Nullus hoc saeculo existit crassior et
crudior Epicureismi propagator [y] Continentur in illis libris tyrannidis et atheismi’ (II, 116–117). On the
reception of Hobbes in Leipzig cf. Hans-Peter Marti, ‘Naturrecht, Ehrbarkeit und Anstand im Spiegel
.
fruhaufkl. arerischer Hobbeskritik. Lambert van Velthuysens Briefdissertation De principiis justi et decori
und ihre Aufnahme in der deutschen Schulphilosophie’, Aufklarung, . 6 (1991), 70–76. According to this
study, J. Thomasius was supposedly the source for the classification of Hobbes as an ‘Epicurean’. For the
interpretation of this connection in contemporary research see Dorothea Kimmich, Epikuraische .
.
Aufklarung. Philosophische und po.etische Konzepte der Selbstsorge (Darmstadt, 1993), pp. 100ff; Bernd
Ludwig, Die Wiederentdeckung des epikuraischen. Naturrechts (Frankfurt am Main, 1998).
27
Cf. Rechenberg, Thomae Hobbesii, (see n. 21), ch. 2; ‘adparet ex dictis, opinor, satis, quae sit civitatis
seu principum in sacris et circa religionem potestas, nempe non absoluta plena, sed jure divino restricta et
ad certa capita limitata’; pp. 159ff: the distinction between church and state (‘conveniunt materialiter,
differunt formaliter’). On this see Link, Herrschaftsordnung, (see n. 6), pp. 225–31.
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influence of Grotius in Reformed Germany, and to which even Christian Thomasius

with his extreme ‘territorialism’ subscribed—came closer to Hobbes’s view on the
relationship between church and state. It did so chiefly through the reduction of faith
to minimal formulas, and by generously granting the sovereign the right to establish
the ‘Adiaphora’ and ‘formalities’.28 Like Machiavelli, Hobbes was regarded on the
whole as an advocate of ‘religio politica’, that is the instrumentalisation of religion
for purposes of reason of state.
The classical formulation of this interpretation can be found in the successful and
.
widely known treatise Uber .
die drei grossen Betruger (On the three great impostors)
(1680) by the theologian and church historian Christian Kortholt (1633–1694), who,
as well as being one of its most influential professors, was one of the founders of Kiel
University, established in 1665.29 In his writings, he dealt with the entire range of
theological themes in Lutheran orthodoxy, including edification, hymn composition,
and church reform (Kortholt anonymously supported Philipp Jakob Spener and
emerging Pietism as early as 1676). His special interest, however, was in early
Christianity. The anti-Christian polemic of pagan authors in the Roman Empire also
formed the background of his analysis and criticism of the ‘new enemies’ of
Christianity, with the difference that in ancient times the persecutors stood outside
the church, whereas in Kortholt’s own day, he claimed, they argued from within
Christendom, disguising themselves as Christians with the aid of the Bible, the glory
of God, peace in church and state, and peace of mind. ‘Libertas philosophandi’ and
‘Studium veritatis’, Kortholt claimed, became a pretext for the devil’s plans to
destroy Christianity from the inside. After the revival of pagan-atheist authors under
the humanist pretext of making available texts of the classical authors, Kortholt
believed that there were now three main ‘impostors’ whose ‘atheistic’ teachings
penetrated into Germany via the route of the academic educational tours of young
scholars and nobles from the more seriously infected countries of Italy, France, the
Netherlands, and England: namely, Herbert of Cherbury (1581–1648), Hobbes
28
See esp. Johannes Brunnemann, De jure ecclesiastico tractatus (Frankfurt an Oder, 1681).
Brunnemann explicitly refers to Grotius and the Anglican Church, and he bases the unlimited religious
authority of the sovereign on the necessity of creating peace, and he attributes to theologians only a
‘potestas mere ministralis’. Through his demands for church reform he shows himself to be an advocate of
enlightened absolutism in its early Christan phase. For Christian Thomasius see Horst Dreitzel,
.
‘Christliche Aufkl.arung durch furstlichen Absolutismus. Thomasius und die Destruktion des
.
fruhneuzeitlichen Konfessionsstaates’, Christian Thomasius. Neue Forschungen im Kontext der
.
Fruhaufkl .
arung, .
ed. Friedrich (Vollhardt, Tubingen, 1997), pp. 17–50.
29
Christian Kortholt, De tribus impostoribus magnis liber cura editus (Kiel, 1680). Drawing on texts by
Lipsius and Contzen, Kortholt knew of the accusation of Pope Gregory IX in his open letter of 1239, that
Emperor Friedrich II had characterised Moses, Mohammed, and Christ as the ‘three great frauds’. He also
spoke of the rumour that Petrus Aretino, Poggio Florentino, or Bernhard Ochino had written a book on
this subject. The conception was foreign to Kaiser Friedrich II and stemmed from discussions within
Islam. Cf. Jacqueline Lagr!ee, ‘Christian Kortholt (1633–1694) et son De tribus impostoribus magnis’,
L’H!eresie spinoziste. La discussion sur loe Tractatus theologico-politicus, 1660–1677, et la re!ception
imm!ediate du spinozisme, ed. Paolo Christofolino (Amsterdam-Maarssen, 1995), pp. 49–65.
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(1588–1679), and Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677).30 These authors were not accused of
atheism in the ordinary sense of the term, but, rather, of denying the possibility and
truth of Christian revelation with arguments modelled on a critical rationalist
method.31 Kortholt’s tightly argued work focused on the exposition of the critical
arguments and, for each of the three philosophers, it shifted into the centre the
destruction of the certainty of revelation, on the one hand, and, on the other,
specific conclusions based on their respective lines of argument: for Cherbury, the
argument over the problem of the historical tradition and its uncertainty and
doubtfulness in comparison with rational knowledge of God; for Spinoza, the
psychological explanation of revelation as the fantastical illusions of depressed
and fanatical human beings, as well as the utilitarian-manipulative conception
of religious notions with respect to the abstract identification of God and
world—the immanence of the divine destroyed the personality of God, Kortholt
maintained. With regard to Hobbes, Kortholt focused, between pages ninety
three and one hundred and thirty nine of the treatise, on the Hobbesian thesis
that all religions, especially revealed religions, were external edifices without
internal truth, but which were also at the same time useful for the ignorant but
potentially dangerous for the state. They therefore obtained their legitimacy solely
by command of the sovereign who was to be obeyed in everything: ‘With the
exception of the one article that Jesus is Christ (which is necessary for salvation by
inner faith) everything belongs to the sphere in which unconditional obedience is
required, even if one does not inwardly believe in what one is doing’.32 Kortholt,
then, showed that in Hobbes’s view even this one article could be denied: ‘Human
speech is an external matter and can no more testify to the obedience of the speaker
than any other bodily action’.33 He criticised this doctrine as a return to the power of
state authority over religion in the city-states, as it had been in the empires of pagan
antiquity.
30
Kortholt, De tribus impostoribus, section 1, n. 11.
31
Ibid., Section 2, n. 10: ‘Religio philosophia non est, sed in omni civitate lex; et proptereea non
disputanda est, sed implemenda’.
32
Ibid., Section 2, n. 13, Kortholt cites Hobbes, De cive, ch. 15, n. 18: ‘Si quaeratur: an obediendum
civitati sit, si imperet aliquid dici vel fieri, quod non directe in Dei contumeliam, sed ex quo per
ratiocinationem consequentiae contumelosae possunt derivari, veluti si imperetur Deum colere sub
imagine coram iis, qui id fieri honorificum esse putant? Certe faciendum est [y] Quamquam enim huius
modi imperata possunt esse interdum contra rectam rationem ideoque peccata in iis, quae imperant, non
tamen sunt contra rectam rationem neque tamen peccata in subditis, quorum in rebus controversis recta
ratio est ea quae submittitur rationi civitatis.’ Hobbes compared the incapacitation of Christians by the
state to the incapacitation of Christians by the papal church.
33
Ibid., p. 125: ‘Quid si jubeamur principe nostro legitimo dicere, quod non credamus, obediendum est?
Respondeo: Vocem hominis rem externam esse neque significare obediantiam proferentis posse magis
quam alius quicunque gestus corporeus’. Kortholt interprets further: to deny externally, believe internally
and obey the government—that is an insult to all martyrs! Cf. Hobbes, De cive, ch. 18, n. 13: ‘Sequitur
manifeste, in civitate Christiana obedientiam deberi summis imperantibus in rebus omnibus, tam
spiritualibus quam temporalibus’.
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3. A disciple: Johann Christoph Becmann
Johann Christoph Becmann was named by his contemporaries, alongside the

Dutch thinker Lambert van Velthuysen (1622–1685), as the most important follower
of Hobbes.34 He declared himself a follower, referring in this regard to De cive and
Leviathan: Hobbes, he claimed, had been the first consistently to derive politics from
the principles of the rational nature of human beings and of social life.35 Becmann
attacked the Aristotelian conception of ‘socialitas’: he derived all social associations
from indigence (indigentia humana), self-interest (desiderium proprium), and mutual
fear (mutuus metus). The individual, he claimed, looks to others for help, protection,
and comfort, and he must hold his own in the world through ‘potestas in se’ and
‘potestas in alienum’, which is enlarged by a union of wills towards a common goal
required by a partial transfer of particular rights to the whole or to its
representatives. Only from such contracts do duties arise. The state is distinguished
by ‘autarky’ (sibi-sufficientia), that is by absolute authority, on the one hand, and by
its comprehensive competence, on the other: ‘causa impulsiva est spe universalis
subsidii’. Becmann took great pains to depict the state as a real person, that is, not
only as an organised mass of human beings with the juridical status of a fictitious
person: ‘respublica enim existit, subsistit, intelligit, agit, quae omnia requisita
personae singularum sunt. Respublica ergo vera persona est, collectiva tamen, hoc
est ex singularibus personis, quae miniori amplitudini minoribusve juribus sunt,
composita, adeoque moralis’.36 Through autarky the state becomes the image and
representative of God. Rational utilitarianism, the transfer of individual rights in
return for mutual help, the state as the all-embracing association equipped with
absolute authority, the respective constitution as the form representing this state—all
this was derived from the simplest elements of self-love and the drive to
34
Lambert Velthuysen, Dissertatio epistolica de principiis justi ac decori continens Apologiam pro tractatu
Hobbesii (Amsterdam, 1651). On Velthuysen, see Hans W. Blom, ‘Lambert van Velthuysen et le
naturalisme’, Cahiers Spinoza 6 (1991), 203–212, and the same author’s Morality and Causality in Politics.
The Rise of Naturalism in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Political Thought (Utrecht, 1995), pp. 101–156. For
Becmann’s view: Nikolaus Hieronymus Gundling, Eroffent . der studierenden Jugend zu Halle III Collegia,
.
uber 1. De Hobbesii Buch de cive, 2. die Pandekten, und den 3ten y Institutionum De justitia et jure (Halle,
1704), p. 12; Justus Henning Boehmer, Introductio in jus publicum universale (Halle, 1710), Section 111
(‘Hobbes asseclas paucos habuit praeter Lambert Velthuysen et Christoph Becmann’); Johannes
Franciscus Buddeus, Compendium historiae philosophiae (Halle, 1731), pp. 511ff; Brucker, Histora critica,
(see n. 3), p. 180.
35
His systematic works were: Meditationes politicae, XXIV dissertationibus academicis expositae
(Frankfurt an Oder, 1672); Politica parallela continuandis et illustrandis meditationes politices (Frankfurt
an Oder, 1676); Conspectus doctrinae politicae brevibus thesis earumque demonstrationibus propositus
(Frankfurt an Oder, 1691). For his praise of Hobbes:, c In Hobbesii libris imprimis eorum, quae de cive et
civitate agunt, scopus generalis est e primis principiis naturae rationalis ac vitae socialis res politicas
eruere: quo quidem nomine praeter caeteris laudandus est, cum nemo politicorum ante illum ausus fuerit’
(Politica parallela, ch. 1, n. 5; cf. Meditationes, pp. 417ff.). His only reservation was about the extension of
his theory to church and religion; indeed, he adjudicated church government to the sovereign alone, but
limited it with the Aristotelian principle of ‘potestas architectonica’: ‘Sic igitur non efficit, ut sint sacra, sed
ut iis bene sit, curat’ (Conspectus, ch. 20).
36
Politica parallela, p. 199.
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self-preservation, and developed according to the natural forces of things. In these

ways Becmann followed Hobbes’s theory of the state. Even the reference to civil wars
and revolutions caused by ‘monarchomachist’ conceptions of the state (dissolving
into a monopoly on violence) were not missing.37 Becmann’s originality lies in his
having combined this formulation with the much more widely discussed argument in
.
German political thought, that concerning reason of state (Statusrason): ‘ratio status
est conformitas cum eo, quod nostro interest, adeoque rei ipsae studium se
conservandi—causa rationis status est amor nostri, finis propria commoda’.38
‘Reason of state’ became the embodiment of individual utilitarianism in society; the
‘commoda nostra’ must always be coordinated with the ‘commodis alienis’.
Becmann explicitly referred in this connection to the ‘natura prima’ of Stoic
doctrine, the discussion of which in Grotius had already been alluded to: ‘Prima
natura vocat [Cicero], quod simulatque natum est animal, ipsum sibi conciliatur et
commendatur ad se conservandum atque suum statum [y]’. He interpreted reason
as the divine part in human beings, albeit purely instrumentally, so that the ‘second
nature’ was not, as with the Stoics, a new, normative reason, but, rather, enlightened
and worldly wise self-interest. Nevertheless, Becmann intended in this manner to be
able to connect individual utility (jus naturae) with the principle of socialitas (jus
gentium) as a divine command: both emerged from the transcendental ‘nature of
things’, from the necessity for self-preservation: ‘Jus gentium igitur ex necessitatibus
et commodorum humanorum respectu natum fuit’.39
Despite these structural similarities, basic differences from Hobbes are also
apparent, as are variations and developments within Epicurean and utilitarian social
philosophy. I would like to discuss three of these.
.
First, it appears that Becmann combined ‘reason of state’ (Statusrason) and ‘amor
sui’ with a duty towards God. In an investigation of the theory of political authority
qua direct foundation of God, he came to the conclusion that a large part of the
rights of state authority could be understood as originating in a transfer of individual
rights; others, however, could not. To the latter belonged, amongst others, the right
to pronounce the death penalty (because no human being has the right to kill
himself), and the ‘dominium eminens’ (because no human being has a right to the
property of others). Becmann, therefore, attached to his utilitarian contract theory a
partially divine right of political office, which was naturally of advantage to the
37
Becmann, however, expressly followed the general theory that resistance was allowed if the sovereign
became the enemy of the people: De divino vicariatu principum (Frankfurt an Oder, 1688), ch. 4, ns. 11–14
(with reference to Grotius, De jure belli et pacis, Bk. 1, ch. 4, n. 7); cf. Christian Link, Herrschaftsordnung,
(see n. 6), pp. 193–198.
38
Meditationes politicae, (Obs. 19), p. 46; the entire third dissertation is devoted to the doctrine of
.
‘reason of state’ (i.e., Statusrason). In Conspectus, p. 10, the ‘studium se conservandi’ is expressly equated
with the ‘first nature’ of the ‘old’ philosophy; the new Italians would have adopted the term ‘ratio status’
for it. It concerns human beings in general, and therefore includes private individuals as well as princes and
states. For the background see Horst Dreitzel, ‘Die ‘Staatsr.ason’ und die Krise des politischen
Aristotelismus’, Aristotelismo Politico e Ragioni di Stato. Atti del convegno internazionale di Torino 11–13
febbriario 1993, ed. A. Enzo Baldini, Florenz, 1993 (Fondatione Luigi Firpo. Studi e Testi 4), pp. 139–156.
39
Conspectus (see n. 35), p. 7.
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monarch. The substance of this office encompassed those rights of state authority
that could not arise from the individual transfers made by citizens.40
Second, by following in the tradition of Johannes Althusius (1557–1638),
Becmann understood politics (Politica) as ‘prudentia socialiter vivendi’; that is, he
interpreted its bond, as was customary in Aristotelianism, as action relating to the
community. In a general part of his Politica, he outlined accordingly common basic
structures shared by all social associations (societates), such as those arising through
contracts, their respectively limited objective, the transfer of individual rights, the
necessity of the representation of all. The state is, as far as this goes, integrated into
the remaining associations, even if it is distinguished by special characteristics, above
all by ‘autarky’. In this process (in which he also followed Grotius), it appears that
Becmann, unlike Hobbes, did not view subjection to a monopoly on violence as a
condition of the possibility of society; instead, he saw this condition more generally
in terms of the possibility of an agreement of interests in accordance with a contract.
Not the war of all against all, but rather needs and interests led human beings to
society and, finally, to the founding of a state: ‘Causa impulsiva est spes universalis
subsidii’.41
Third, Becmann’s efforts to see the state, ‘absolutism’ notwithstanding, as a
system of reciprocal duties of justice, that is as a constitutional state, is directly
connected with this conception. This occurred primarily through an analysis of
rights which the ‘subject’ (subditus) possessed inalienably (jura subditorum). In a
dissertation which he devoted to this subject, he divided these rights into four
categories: inalienable human rights (‘jura hominis, quia homo est’); the rights due to
the citizen as participant in the social contract as such (‘jura subditorum, quia subditi
sunt’, ‘ex nexu inter membra societata’); and the rights which he receives through
each special formation of the social contract, through ‘leges fundamentales’, as well
as those which the citizen possesses in extreme situations of the state.42 To the first
group belong freedom of conscience and religion, ‘libertas philosophica’—freedom
of thought, inquiry, speech, information and discussion, and the right to choose
one’s way of life and profession. These basic rights are in each case, however, subject,
to the ‘architectonic’ organisation of the state, that is to restriction through laws in
accordance with reason of state. Thus the sovereign is basically entitled to the ‘jus in
res sacras’; but this relates, on the one hand, only to the organisation of ‘public’
40
De divino vicariatu principum, (see f.n. 37), ch. 3, n. 3: ‘Dicemus proinde, in summa reipublicae
potestate duorum generum jura concurrere: quaedam, quae ipsi competunt vi suprematus sui inter
homines: quaedam quae Divinum imperium in homines repraesentant. Priora fluunt ex translatione [y]
posteriora ex Divino imperio’. Cf. Conspectus, p. 70. The objective heart of this idea was that specific
positively judged responsibilities of state authority could not arise from the transfer of individual rights,
but rather only from the ‘nature of things’.
41
Conspectus, p. 61. Chapters 3–5 treat societies; the state beginning only with chapter 6.
42
Dissertatio de jure subditorum Circa sacra (Frankfurt an Oder, 1689): ‘Quaestio praecipue est de jure
proprio et manente subditorum stante illa summa et universali potestate principum et facta jurium in eum
translatione; et post eam de jure eorundem ex pacta quaesito vel alias reservato’ (ch. 1, n. 10); as an
analogy, in ch. 2, n. 1, among others, the rights in ‘societates minores’ are stated. Ch. 1, n. 1 distinguishes
human rights, general state civil rights, and civil rights from constitutional contracts and political rights in
extreme situations.
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religion whose confession must not be forced, and, on the other, only to its
‘externals’. From citizenship follows not only the legal claim of the subjects to
protection, proper legal process, civil rights, and right of petition, but also the legal
commitment of the sovereign in regard to the alienation of state authority, disposal
of domains, order of succession, testamentary disposal of the state, and use of state
authority outside state purposes (be it for personal enrichment or for the
enforcement of another confession). The right of revolt in cases where the sovereign
becomes a destroyer of the state and an enemy of the citizens also belongs to these
civil rights, along with the right to disobedience in regard to commands contrary to
divine commandments. Becmann emphatically demanded, in this connection, the
right of all citizens to inform themselves about political matters and to judge them,
particularly in order to be prepared for the ‘casus necessitatis’. The third category,
the reciprocal obligations of the ‘leges fundamentales’, can, for example, regulate the
preservation of a ‘religio publica’ even if the monarch deviates from it (as occurred in
Brandenburg-Prussia). Indeed the problem of estates-representation connected with
this subject is only barely touched upon.
On the whole, in the framework of his utilitarian and Hobbesian theory of state, it
appears that through his consistent orientation towards the individual, Becmann,
like Spinoza, managed to limit absolutism. The difference from Pufendorf lay in the
fact that Becmann, guided by the principle of individual utility, worked out human
and civil rights, whereas Pufendorf, through the norm of ‘socialitas’ revealed by
reason, concentrated on the duties of ‘man and citizen’, as well as on the structure of
the constitution (on ‘Monarchia limitata’, among others). Nothing is known about
the history of Becmann’s impact. He did not consider himself a part of ‘eclectic
philosophy’, propagated at his university by the moral philosopher Arnold
Wesenfeld (1664–1727), and, in contrast to Pufendorf and Thomasius, he has not
become a part of the canon of German natural law philosophers. Nevertheless, it
should be remembered that Althusius’ conception of incorporating the state into the
‘societates’ as a whole and interpreting it accordingly, which Becmann took up, was
again taken up in eighteenth-century natural law theory, for example by Daniel
Nettelbladt, in his Systema elementare universae jurisprudentiae (Halle, 1749). But
Becmann’s further development of Hobbes’ political philosophy was not directly
engaged with. The impact of was determined rather by ‘eclectic philosophy’.
4. Reception and rejection in Pufendorf
The fundamentals of the relationship of ‘eclectic philosophy’ to Hobbes were laid

down in the course of Pufendorf’s intensive engagement with his thought as early as
1660, in his Elementa jurisprudentiae universalis, and then, primarily, in his major
work, De jure naturae et gentium (1672).43 Pufendorf always stresses both Hobbes’s
43
Pufendorf’s relationship to Hobbes has been investigated in many monographs devoted to him and in
.
a few special treatises; see the exhaustive bibliography (up to 1991) in Detlef Doring, Pufendorf-Studien
(Berlin, 1992). See esp. Fiammetta Palladini, Samuel Pufendorf discepolo di Hobbes. Par una
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sophistication and the importance of his ideas at the same time as he emphasises the
fundamental differences between them. The ideas he examined lay in the reduction of
natural law to account for external behaviour between men, in the deductive-
constitutive method which originated with individual human beings in the ‘state of
nature’ and, in connection with this, with the understanding of the social institutions
of the state as ‘artificial’ (arising out of purposive activity from specific, limited
interests and considerations of established organisations): hence the rejection of the
Aristotelian conception that, despite all secondary causes and diverse developments,
social institutions have to do with ‘natural’ facts which in their origin and basic
structure are, along with the existence of human beings, given a priori. Pufendorf, in
contrast, shared with Aristotle the principle of ‘socialitas’, transforming it, however,
from a Grotian ‘lex aeterna’ of the structure of human nature grounded in a
metaphysical reason independent of God’s will, into a command from God’s free will
for human reason. This conception remained in eclectic philosophy and was
increasingly associated with the emphasis on freedom of the will, prevailing against
all forms of utilitarianism, on the one hand, and of essentialistic rationalism, on the
other, even if Pufendorf’s consistent empiricism through the increasing emphasis on
‘inner’ experience (sensus communis) pointed more and more strongly to an analogy
with the ‘innate ideas’ he so resolutely rejected. Also characteristic was that ‘certain
knowledge’ (in the sense of the traditional, mathematically orientated concept) was
henceforth to apply mainly to ‘natural law’, while the fields of natural philosophy
and the natural sciences, just like the remaining disciplines of practical philosophy,
were assigned to ‘probable’ knowledge. Natural right was a ‘law’, above all a theory
of duties, and subjective rights were understood as part of the overall duties. The
basic features of human existence were borrowed from Hobbes: the striving towards
self-preservation as the dominant motive for action and ‘imbecillitas’ as the inability
of surviving in isolation. But basic for Pufendorf was that, in contrast to Hobbes, he
did not view reason as an instrument of the striving for individual self-preservation,
but rather as an organ of knowledge for the command to subordinate individual
reinterpretazione des giusnaturalismo moderno (Bologna, 1990), and Thomas Behne, ‘Pufendorf-Schuler .
von Hobbes?’, Denkhorizonte und Handlungsspielraume. . Historische Studien fur . Rudolf Vierhaus zum
.
siebzigsten Geburtstag, (Gottingen, 1992), pp. 33–52. Richard Tuck, Natural rights theories. Their origin
and development (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 156–161, claims that there is a shift away from a Hobbesian
conception in the Elementa in his De jure; Pufendorf dispensed with the original foundation as a
prudential account in favour of an interpretation which grounded the obligatoriness of natural law in God
as law-giver. Already in the Elementa, however, it says: ‘Adeoque hactenus dumtaxat homo seipsum
curare tenetur, quatenus Dei servus et societatis humanae pars est’ (D. 12, n. 17); ‘remoto divinae vindictae
metu, nulla sufficiens adparet ratio, quare id, ad quod alteri praestandum rebus meis sic ferentibus me
obligarem, utilitatis ratione post conservatione omnino praestare tenear’ (ibid., n. 16; cf. also ibid. Obs. IV
and Def. 12, n. 1 on innate duties ‘adversus Deum’ and ‘adversus quoslibet homines qua tales’). There,
too, he criticised Hobbes for having disregarded the obligation to ‘socialitas’ (Obs. IV, n. 5). In the
same way, I consider the view that Pufendorf deviated from Grotius with this argument (‘Grotius
could not be preserved if Hobbes was to be refuted’) to be false. ‘Natural rights’ consisted for both of them
in the principle of equality which underlays ‘socialitas’ (Obs. IV, ns. 21–34); De jure belli et pacis, Bk. 1,
ch. 2, n. 1).
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self-preservation to the norms of social life among basically equal human beings (the
preservation of ‘genus humanum’). He reproached Hobbes not only for having
falsely constructed the ‘state of nature’ and the state through the derivation of right
and state from individual ‘utility’, but chiefly for having misjudged a characteristic
feature of human beings, namely, their obligation to normative reason, thereby
abolishing natural right. Natural right was useful for human beings, as a whole as
well as for each and every human being, and thus, at first, for the individual. The
difference lay deeper, in the idea of what a ‘society’ actually was, in what the
conditions of its enduring existence consisted, and what the reference group for a
natural right was. Whereas Hobbes understood ‘society’ as violence-free association,
and saw its condition in the existence of a person or institution who secured peace
and who, therefore, had a monopoly on all violence, Pufendorf was of the opinion
that a society of human beings could only exist if they all fundamentally recognised
each other as equals; that this recognition of all human beings as fundamental
equals, however, could never be derived from actual individuals’ interests in
preservation and happiness and stabilised with respect to the variety of their
interests; that, on the contrary, it was a characteristic feature of human beings to
perceive this necessary condition of existence, not as a direct interest of the actual
individual human being, but, rather, as a universal and imposed law that pertained
to humanity as a whole in opposition to which, however, the individual could freely
act as a person and for whose observance or lack of observance he nevertheless
carried responsibility before human beings and God. The exit from the state of
nature into the state was therefore not the condition of the possibility of social co-
existence, but was necessary only because of specific historical circumstances, in
particular, population growth. The rise of the state was, accordingly, explained
differently in Hobbes and in Pufendorf and led to different results: in the former,
intelligence in preservation led to the emergence of a monopoly on violence by
absolute subjugation; in the latter, the state arose through contracting between
equals and through collective decisions on the realisation of laws of right under the
real conditions of a society condensed above all through population growth. In this
way, the continental tradition of natural law theory came to be expressed, a tradition
that precisely through the emphasis on jurisprudence, also assigned its function for
‘private right’ a significance of at least an equal rank to that for ‘state right’. As to
the stucture of the ‘state’ required for the realisation of the law of right, Pufendorf
followed Grotius, on the one hand, insofar as he explained the state’s emergence as a
planned process of free contracting, and Bodin and Hobbes, however, on the other,
insofar as he understood the structure of states (for reasons of objective necessity) as
an order of power under a sovereign authority. Only after Pufendorf, in the
Enlightenment ‘general theory of state’ (jus publicum universale), did a strict principle
of sovereignty as the criterion of a state gain acceptance in Germany. Pufendorf’s
ideal constitution was, however, not the absolute, but rather the ‘limited’ monarchy
(monarchia limitata). It limited, it is true, not the sovereign authority itself, but rather
its application, so that a monarchy with limited power emerged which was law-
bound in principle, ideally constitutional, and which contained—in the modern sense
of the expression—a separation of powers.
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5. The repercussions of Hobbes’ ideas in eclectic philosophy
Through Pufendorf Hobbes’ political theory was at the same time both rejected
and preserved, as the further development of Pufendorf’s conception by ‘eclectic
philosophers’ often resulted in a new examination and discussion of Hobbes’s claims.
The latter’s influence in eclectic philosophy is apparent in several ways:
(a) Methodical discussions dealt with the function and interpretation of the state
of nature as a real, hypothetical, or fictional starting point of the state.44 In contrast
to the use of artificial hypotheses in the natural sciences in order to explain natural
phenomena, the employment of this method in natural law was widely perceived as
problematic, since it was believed that it could in fact be proved that the alleged
‘state of nature’ had not only probably, but had actually, existed. In this way, the
‘state of nature’ construction could amount not only to an analysis of human nature
independent of the rise of the state, but also to an analysis of the actual historical
process of development in such a way that it could seek historical verification. From
the writings of Nikolaus Hieronymus Gundling (1671–1729) and Justus Henning
.
Bohmer (1674–1749)45 it is evident that Hobbes’ state of nature was no longer
regarded merely as the starting point for the construction of the state, but rather as a
reason and incentive to fulfil one’s duty of ‘socialitas’. Consequently, the origin of
.
the state was transformed in Bohmer’s writings into a lengthy, continuous process of
small steps progressively moving away from despotism and towards the ‘rule of law’
(Rechtsstaat). It is not possible here to discuss other solutions to this dilemma. In
each case, however, they led to a trinity of philosophical and psychological
anthropology, a rational hypothetical construction of history based on the structures
of natural law, and actually observed historical proceedings. As opposed to ‘realistic’
interpretations, the taking up of the thesis on ‘fiction’, discussed in connection with
the ‘fictions’ of Roman Law (for example, the ‘universitas’ as ‘persona publica’),
44
For the discussion of this problem see Pufendorf, Specimen controversiarum (see n. 2), ch. 4, n. 1 (the
same function as hypotheses in physics and astronomy, that is, not as innate ideas, but as ones derived
from experience, ‘veritas et existentia manifestis et certis demonstrationibus utique subnitantur’) and:
‘Commentatio super invenusto veneris Lipsicae pullo V. Alberti calumnis’, ibid. p. 356 (function as the
starting point of deduction; no hypothesis, but rather ‘fundamentalis propositio’); Johann Christoph
Becmann: Conspectus (see n. 35), ch. 4 on ‘hypotheses politicae’ (assumptions, not a claim for existence;
examples are: the ‘state of nature’ which never existed but was introduced in order to prove the necessity of
social life; the transfer of individual rights to the sovereign at the founding of the state; the tacitly reached
social contract ‘ex natura negotii’ etc.) Johann Heinrich Hertius, Elementa prudentiae civilis (Frankfurt am
Main., 1703), p. 1, n. 1 (the hypothesis of the human state of nature as an equivalent of the most
rudimentary element, as discovered in physics through the analytical method; its existence is not
necessary—only its possibility. In Hertius the ‘state of nature’ turns into an analysis of human nature). The
proposition is entirely absent from discussions of ‘de natura hominis’, as, for example, in Johann
Franciscus Buddeus’s Elementa philosophiae instrumentalis (Halle, 1725), p. 261: ‘Ex naturae humanae et
societatis cuiuslibet aut ipsius negotii consideratione certa constituantur principia, ex quibus deinceps
conclusiones deducantur, quibus aut officia aut iura, de quibus quaeritur, definiatur, aut remedia etiam
proponientur.’
45
.
Bohmer, Introductio (see f.n. 34), pp. 134ff. and 146ff. This corresponded with Lucretius’
interpretation, De rerum natura, 5.1458ff. (‘usus et impigrae simul experientia mentis paulatim docuit
pedentimque progredientis’).
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remained an exception. The dualism of historical interpretation is manifest, for

instance, in the context of the theory of the contractual origins of the state, in the
obscure relationship between real fundamental laws and the assumption of ‘tacit’
consent with regard to structurally necessary and real but unprovable contracts.
(b) The methodological influence of Hobbes can be further seen in the growing
tendency of reducing natural law to the preservation of external peace. In contrast to
Grotius, Hobbes promoted the emphasis in natural law theory on juridical issues,
that is on the fundamental principles of positive law, state law (Staatsrecht), and
international law, that is to say, on the norms of external, enforceable, social
behaviour and its organisation (for instance, through the exclusion of ‘ius divinum’
and ‘lex Christi’)—an emphasis which only grew stronger in Pufendorf’s writings.
The traditional scholastic view of natural right as the whole of natural law included a
much larger field, such as the relation of man to God, the relation of man to himself,
and the norms for the unenforceable behaviour of ‘humanitas’ and utility. In the
natural law teachings of philosophia christiana, the scope of this ‘ethical’ concept of
natural law was strongly defended. Hence Pufendorf’s ethics, which were based
exclusively on the principle of ‘socialitas’ (De officio hominis et civis), were
particularly criticised by eclectic philosophers as an undue reduction, not least
because of his instrumental view of religion as a motivating force for sociable
behaviour. As a result, endless discussions on the nature and structure of ‘natural
law’ emerged in order to distinguish and integrate its different dimensions (honestum,
justum, pium, utile, decorum—perfect and imperfect duties, internal and external
behaviour). It was not until the writings of Christian Thomasius and Gundling that
the tendency of limiting the term ‘jus naturae stricte dictu’ to norms of sociable
behaviour enforceable by violence finally prevailed.46 For Gundling, especially, the
influence of Hobbes played a major role. This influence is most evident in his
imperative: ‘Strive for peace where possible; otherwise, however, be prepared for
war’. In one of his dissertations47 Gundling defended both Hobbes’s theory of the
state of nature, as well as this normative deduction as the only realistic basis for state
law, by unmasking all arguments for ‘socialitas’ and ‘amicitia’ as illusions, even, for
example, the notion of the peace-bringing consequences of the conciliation of
interests through commerce and social intercourse. On the contrary, only through
the force of a sovereign does man become an ‘animal sociale’. As a matter of fact, a
state of war reigned even between different nations that could only be overcome by a
46
.
The best overview is still Heinrich Ruping, Die Naturrechtslehre des Christian Thomasius und ihre
Fortbildung in der Thomasius-Schule (Bonn, 1968). Representatives of the purely juridical natural law
school were, for instance: Gottlieb Samuel Treuer, Logomachias in juris naturae doctrina (Helmsedt, 1720),
ch. 1; Ephraim Gerhard, Delineatio juris naturae sive de principiis justi (Jena, 1712); Jacob Friedrich
Ludovici, Doctrina juris naturae juridice consideratur (Giessen, 1727); Nikolaus Hieronymus Gundling,
.
Ausfuhrlicher .
Diskurs uber .
das Natur- und Volkerrecht (Frankfurt am Main, 1734), where, at p. 58,
Gundling attributes the reduction to ‘externa’ to Hobbes.
47
Nikolaus Hieronymus Gundling, Status naturalis Hobesii in corpere juris civilis defensus et defendendus
occasione legis De justitia et jure (Halle, 1704). For his later development, see below section d. For an
equally radical defence of Hobbes see Johann Heinrich Hombergk a Vach, Dissertatio de pace et societate
humanis generis natura constituta ex ipsis principiis T. Hobbii probata (Marburg, 1722).
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universal monarchy. Finally, Gundling rejected the difference between utility and
justice. Rational self-interest, he maintained, also brought about the most just
conditions. The ethical concept of natural law, by contrast, was commonly upheld in
the early Enlightenment (in J. F. Buddeus’ and Christian Wolff’s writings), because it
preserved the connection with ethical norms since
otherwise, the splendid doctrine of the relations between officiorum and their
subordination, which is the reason for the excellent and otherwise hardly critical
doctrine of the collisione officiorum (which oftentimes needs to be taken into
account in foro humano), would seriously be neglected [y] In turning justum into
jure naturale kat exochen it is also to be feared [y] that one may fall into the error
of thinking that the other officia did not have as strong an obligation as the officia
justi since the duties towards God and ourselves have an even stronger force of
obligation.48
The ethical theory of natural law thus contained the key arguments for the
limitation of state power wherever the doctrine of ‘natural rights’ had not already
taken over this particular function.
(c) Pufendorf’s conception of natural law presupposed a natural theology based
on a theistic structure, even though traces remained of a purely immanent theory of
the foundation of natural law and the state as it was presented by Hobbes, and which
was even acceptable to atheists. In order to comply with his conception, Pufendorf
had tried, without real success, to transfer the sanctions of natural law fully into the
worldly sphere.49 Wherever the coherence between secular natural law and
Protestant theology was emphasised, however, his conception was, naturally,
immediately perceived as a positive argument. Nevertheless, the Hobbesian elements
continued to have an effect. The Leipzig philosopher August Friedrich Muller, . for
instance, attempted to derive the universal obligation of natural law from insight
into the actual connection and mutual dependence of all human actions in the world
as a whole, that is from the actual benefit of every single individual—a solution
which, even under the conditions of today’s global society, is only convincing in
certain sectors.50 In any case, the majority of eclectic philosophers held to the divine
command of reason in natural law. It remained a doctrine of duties whereby the
freedom and spontaneity of the will, as defined in the juridical tradition (‘facere quod
velis’; ‘imputatio’), was continuously refined as the fundamental capacity of man
together with the tendency of viewing this freedom as the core of the inviolable rights
of man. As a doctrine of both duties and freedoms, it paved the way for
48
August Friedrich Glafey, Geschichte des Rechts der Vernunft (Leipzig, 1739), p. 174. A profound
discussion of the problems with reference to Samuel Strimesius (see n. 13); a critique of Hobbes can be
found on pp. 170–178.
49
Pufendorf, Apologia pro se et suo libro, in Eris Scandica (see n. 2), n. 33: ‘Cum religio, quantenus ad
disciplinam juris naturalis pertinet, intra sphaeram huius vitae terminetur; eo quoque intuitu ad
socialitatem referre potest, quatenus illa societatibus hominum efficacissimum vinculum praebet’; also: De
officio hominis et civis (1673), ch. 4, n. 8.
50
Cf. Glafey, Geschichte, (see n. 48), p. 269ff.
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individualism.51 Yet understanding the moral law as the autonomous self-legislation

of human reason and its fulfilment as ‘freedom’ was a step reserved for Kant—and
even he required additional ‘ideas’ to bridge the gap between moral action and the
consequences of such action congruent with their morality.
Indeed, as early as 1705, Christian Thomasius had given up the idea of natural law
as law, of God as legislator and judge. Like Hobbes, he reduced natural law to a kind
of recommendation, to the general teachings of prudence for the realisation of
happiness. In so doing natural law lost its character as ‘law’ in international law, for
instance, or in the filling of juridical lacunae in positive law. It also lost its character
as a commandment of reason. The separation between ethical principles and their
individual utility, Thomasius maintained, was wrong, ‘quod faciunt communiter, qui
contra Hobbesium disputant.’ Preservation and happiness in one’s own life are the
fundamental principles. The decision regarding which life has precedence is to be
decided on an individual basis.52 However, in Thomasius’ thought the focal point in
‘utilitas’ changed: whereas Hobbes presented a utilitarianism of self-preservation
given the premise of an unlimited will to power and of the war of all against all,
Thomasius introduced a ‘gentler’ form of utilitarianism which no longer proceeded
from self-preservation, but, rather, from the satisfaction of the different passions
(passiones), some of which, like the passion for love and power, require other
humans for their fulfilment and thus entail, for their own sake, social relations such
that the ‘state of nature’ is neither a state of war nor of friendship, but a confused
state lying somewhere between the two. Hence it is not so much the task of the state
to establish peace and end the war of all against all, but to create a social order which
permits the satisfaction of very diverse interests; in other words, to direct these
interests into a harmonious whole. The coordination of extremely different interests
and characters—a motive that was secondary for Hobbes and Pufendorf in their
thoughts on the origins of the state—thus enters the foreground. Thomasius explains
this through his doctrine of the infinite number of possible combinations of the three
human passions (voluptas, ambitio, avaritia), which, however, never (as Hobbes had
falsely assumed) violently conflict with each other.53 Here, as later in Adam Smith,
the impartial spectator as optimal legislator appears on the scene;54 so too does the
reduction of natural law doctrines to a few very general principles in contrast to
51
.
August Friedrich Muller, Einleitung in die philosophischen Wissenschaften (2nd edition, Leipzig, 1733),
II, 1024ff.; Christian August Crusius, Anweisung vernunftig. zu leben (Leipzig, 1744), pp. 45ff. and 255ff.;
.
Friedrich Wagner, Versuch einer grundlichen Untersuchung, welches der wahre Begriff von der Freiheit des
Willens sei? (Berlin, 1730).
52
Christian Thomasius, Fundamenta juris naturae et gentium (Halle, 1705), Bk. 1, ch. 5, ns. 34–42 (God
as paternal counsellor); Bk. 1, ch. 6, n. 7 (violating counsels is detrimental in life); n. 7 (thus also atheists
are obliged to fulfil them); n. 31 (fundamental maxim: ‘Facienda esse, quae vitam hominum reddunt et
maxime diuturnam et felicissimam’); ns. 25–28 (connection between self-interest and general welfare of
others); n. 35 (happiness defined as external peace and peace of mind).
53
Ibid., Bk. 1, ch. 4, ns. 6–14.
54
Ibid., Bk. 1, ch. 1, ns. 52ff.: ‘Hominis vero diversissima ratio est [y] in tantum ut nullus homo
reperiatur, cuius voluntas conspiret in omnibus cum voluntate alterius. Sed et nemo reperitur, cuius
voluntas a natura repugnet in omnibus voluntati alterius. Contra principum Hobbesii de statu naturali
belli omnium contra omnes.’ On the confused state of nature see: Bk. 1, ch. 3, n. 55.
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which actual positive rights, which arise out of the respective social structures and
interests, receive the real emphasis. Human interests are remarkably diverse, not to
mention unstable. The individual conscience depends on prevailing opinions; the
wise need to direct the ignorant majority.
Thomasius’ doctrine was based on an anthropology that viewed the human
passions and their wise balance in the interest of self-preservation and happiness,
rather than the rules of reason, as the fundamental structure. Bound up with this was
also a different interpretation of Epicurus that was no longer based on Hobbes, but
rather on Gassendi. Not self-preservation but peace of mind, ‘tranquillitas animi’,
was now perceived as the highest good in his teachings. Natural religion thus played
an eminent role. Many philosophers from the Thomasian school, such as Nikolaus
Hieronymus Gundling, Andreas Rudiger, . and Adolf Friedrich Hoffmann, placed
this Christian form of Epicureanism at the centre of their ethics.55
(d) From Pufendorf to Brucker, Hobbes’ political theory was characterised in a
twofold manner: on the one hand, as ‘Machiavellianism’, as an apology for despotic
absolutism; and, on the other, as Epicureanism, an ethics directed solely at the
satisfaction of individual appetites in this world. The particular feature of this
Epicureanism was that, contrary to the traditional view that saw it as a doctrine that
defined happiness as ‘voluptas’, it regarded the fundamental interest of the individual
(in connection with the ‘natura prima’ of Stoic anthropology) as consisting in self-
preservation. Hobbes, consequently, stood within a much broader array of concepts,
namely, those viewing the ‘conservatio sui’ and the ‘conservatio status sui’ (reason of
state in the sense of reason of status) as the fundamental motive of social and ethical
behaviour. This view of the ‘conservatio sui/status sui’ (as described above in
connection with the natural law teachings of J. C. Becmann) was closely related to
the Italian and German reason of state literature. In Germany, this view became the
central concept in the development of an individualistic and utilitarian ethics which,
by the end of the seventeenth century, had led to the identification of ‘reason of
state’, ‘politics’, and ‘prudentia vivendi’. Eclectic philosophers prided themselves on
having raised ‘politics’ for the first time to the level of an independent discipline
through their reorganisation of practical philosophy into natural law theory (the
doctrine of natural law and corresponding actions); ethics (the doctrine of inner
conscientiousness and peace of mind); ‘politics’ as a prudential theory of self-
preservation, the preservation of ‘status sui’, and of the state; as well as a theory of
‘decorum’, of civilised behaviour among men. The ‘medical’ understanding of ethics
developed by Vinzenz Placcius (1642–1698) and Johannes Franciscus Buddeus
marked an important step in this development. Placcius and Buddeus maintained
that the true goal of ethics was the reconstruction and preservation of the divinely
created ‘nature’ of man and his natural ‘status’ (without using the doctrine of ‘status
55
The non-Hobbesian interpretation of Epicurus can, for example, be found in Georg Pasch, De variis
modis moralia tradendi (Kiel, 1701), pp. 673ff; Johann Friedrich Heunisch, Dissertatio historico-moralis,
qua Epicurum Circa summum bonum defensum (Leipzig, 1682); Andreas Adam Hochstetter, Collegium
.
Pufendorfianum (Tubingen, .
1710), p. 28; Nikolaus Hieronymus Gundling, Ausfuhrlicher .
Diskurs uber das
.
Natur- und Volkerrecht (Frankfurt am Main, 1734), pp. 13ff.
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integritatis’).56 In this context, the question of the reception and transformation of

self-preservation and status-preservation in the interpretation of Hobbes arises. This
centred on the question of whether or not the ‘state of nature’ was to be regarded as
a war of all against all (or, in Christian Thomasius’ formulation, as the relations
between gladiators in the arena). The further development of this issue is most
evident in the writings of Nikolaus Hieronymous Gundling. Among the professors
of philosophy of this period, it was Gundling who studied political science in the
greatest depth as well as the related disciplines such as natural and international law,
politics, the science of the states, positive law, and history. In his lectures on the third
part of practical philosophy, the ‘Politic’ of J. F. Buddeus,57 a bestseller of the early
Enlightenment, even Gundling followed the common definition of politics as ‘ars
tuendi et conservandi statum suum’. Two developments in particular deserve
comment. First, Gundling makes a gradual shift from discussions of ‘status-
preservation’ to discussions of ‘happiness’. The fourth chapter is entitled ‘De vera
cuiuslibet status felicitate’; ‘happiness’, however, is still understood as preservation:
Every human has his specific locum moralem which he must preserve and from
whose path he must remove all obstacles. Ex illo ordine demum resultat felicitas.
We have no other end, and also should have no other, than to seek to preserve
ourselves—this end God has granted and given us [y] If we want only to
conserve what we have received from his hands, we have only to remove that
which ruins and destroys it [y]58
The dynamic principle is also part of ‘preservation’: ‘Man always has a self-chosen
finem, scopum before his inner eye [y] Thus also small societies need to be ordered in
such a way that every individual can attain his destiny.’ Politics consequently is
defined as:
a science which shows us how all ranks of society can live happily, most of all,
however, how a state in which all ranks are united is to be happily governed [y]
56
Brucker, Historia critica (see n. 3), pp. 729ff (further authors can be found there). Vinzenz Placcius,
Typos medicinae moralis, Hamburg, 1685; Johann Franciscus Buddeus, Elementa philosophiae practicae
.
(Halle, 1695); Martin Musig, Licht der Weisheit, in den nothigsten .
Stucken der wahren Gelehrsamkeit zur
.
Erkenntnis menschlicher und gottlicher Dinge, nach Anleitung der philosophischen und theologischen
.
Grundsatze Herrn J. Fr. Buddei (2nd edition, Frankfurt/Leipzig, 1716), I, 2: ‘What should be the principal
aim of man? That he be freed from the state of misery in which he finds himself placed by nature so that he
may be transferred to a state of felicity.’ In the early Enlightenment, ‘tranquillitas animae’ (peace of mind,
.
serenity, cf. n. 52) and ‘perfection’ (Johannes Sperlette, Christian Wolff, Friedrich August Muller, Johann
Georg Walch) competed with this conception of the ‘highest good’.
57
.
Nikolaus Hieronymus Gundling, ‘Ausfuhrlicher und mit illustren Exemplen aus der Historie und Staaten
.
Notiz erlauterter .
Discours uber Weyland Herrn D. Jo. Franc. Buddei, SS. Theologiae Prof., Philosophicae
Practicae Pars III’. Die Politic (Frankfurt–Leipzig 1733), chs. 1–6. For the development of the ‘unpolitical’
concept of politics in the early Enlightenment see Monarchiebegriffe (cf. n. 23), pp. 601–605, 620–662, and
the numerous literary analyses of the ‘political movement’ (esp. on Christian Weise): Wilfried Barner,
.
Barockrhetorik. Untersuchungen zu ihren geschichtlichen Grundlagen (Tubingen, 1970), esp., pp. 135ff., and
.
Gunther E. Grimm, Literatur und Gelehrtentum in Deutschland. Untersuchungen zum Wandel ihres
.
Verhaltnisses .
von Humanismus bis zur Spataufkl .
arung (T.ubingen, 1983), esp., pp. 233–356, 426–446.
58
Ibid., p. 89.
ARTICLE IN PRESS
For how can a state or a whole republic become happy if each of the
families, houses, and societies within it are not governed with reason and
wisdom?59
In this way, the concept of preservation was transformed into a concept of

happiness that would then become the leading term for the political utilitarianism of
the late Enlightenment. Just as noteworthy is the change in theories of the origins of
the state and society. In his draft of a Latin ‘Politica’,60 Gundling describes these
origins under the fictitious premise of a ceaseless human egoism. Through the
interplay of distinct interests and social indigence arises no war of all against all but,
rather, a development that, although potentially conflictual, is on the whole free of
violence. The crucial difference with respect to Hobbes lies in the functionality of the
distinctness of human beings, and in the breaking up of the process into the smallest
steps in which mutually increasingly interests balance each other out. The
differentiation of society constantly advances in the course of the historical process:
‘The longer the world exists, the more status emerges. Humans are continually
inventing new things. We cannot easily go back—that is, unless a war comes which
cleans things up a little.’61 Mutual dependence expands, above all, with the
differentiation of the economy: ‘Once the civitas had grown to several hundred
thousand people, thus did more social ranks come into being. The more people, the
greater the need; not everyone could continue to live from agriculture alone.’62 The
money economy and commerce thus become necessary. The economy and its
development becomes the most important element of the history of society—and the
social inequality within its divinely ordained motor. Even the rise of political rule
gradually leads to peace and to states that realise the common good. ‘The fate of
inequality of rank and property, poverty, wealth, prestige, power, and weakness
guides men and prods them to deliberate upon new rules. And hence from such
chaos and inequality the striving for order emerges.’63 In the final analysis, however,
order and justice as the product of conflicting interests is the work of God. This
physico-theological conception renders possible the peaceful uniting of individual
utilitarianism, the common good, and progress under the rubric of a just society.64
The subsequent appearance of the idea of social harmony and of God as its
guarantor (‘experientia docet’)—since he repairs the consequences of wrong human
deeds and guides them on the whole so that humans are unwittingly saved from
59
Nikolaus Hieronymus Gundling, Einleitung zur wahren Staatsklugheit (Frankfurt/Leipzig, 1751), p. 3.
This book, like the one mentioned in footnote 41, is compiled from lecture notes.
60
Nikolaus Hieronymus Gundling, Politica seu prudentia civilis ratione connexa, exemplis illustrata, in
Gundlingiana, 45 (1732), ch. 2, ns. 7–11.
61
Discours (cf. n. 57), p. 29.
62
Ibid., p. 38.
63
Politica, (cf. n. 60), p. 26.
64
Ibid., p. 27: ‘Facit hoc, inquam, Deus eiusque aeterna providentia, qui admirabili sapientia vel ipse
reparat, quod culpa nostra perit, vel ad reparationem manum ducit, ne prorsus eamus pessum. In
spiritualibus omnibus id Christiani notum est. In rebus terrenis hoc commenstrat, experientia docet.’ Thus
‘enormis norma’ arises from ‘confusione ordo’.
ARTICLE IN PRESS
greater damage—are the key elements which turn the pessimistic utilitarianism of
Hobbes into the optimistic utilitarianism of the late Enlightenment.65
6. Displacement and return: Wolff and his opponents
(a) The aim of Christian Wolff (1679–1754) once more to unite all ethical,
utilitarian, and juridical dimensions of ‘natural law’ under the gradualist, rational
principle of human perfection (quod hominem ejusque status perficit) precluded the
possibility of a profound discussion of Hobbes. Even though Wolff, like Hobbes,
derived human societies from ‘imbecillitas hominis’,66 he placed them under the pre-
eminent law of ‘common right’ according to which all humans are fundamentally
equal with respect to their natural duties and rights (jura connata: ‘aequalitas,
libertas agendi, jus securitatis a laesione et inde natum jus defensionis et puniedae’)67
as well as in their obligation not only to accept each other as equals, but also to help
each other ‘as oneself’: ‘Therefore every individual must have the firm and constant
will to promote the perfection and happiness of every other human being.’ Wolff
consciously took up the tradition of the Christian natural law of ‘caritas ordinata’
and Aristotelianism (‘amicitia’); but above all, he took up the deduction of juridical
matters from teleological natural givens.68 From this emerged his conception of the
state as the organiser of an all-embracing public welfare, of the society’s physical and
moral happiness. On the other hand, Wolff logically developed that conception—
typical of the later German Enlightenment—which might best be termed ‘ethical
deism’: norms can be drawn from human nature without recourse to God, their
sanction being effected independently of God’s judgment through the natural
consequences of the respective acts according to the degree of their agreement with,
or deviation from, these norms.69 However, this did not imply that the relationship
to God—knowledge of which reason could deduce from the knowledge of nature as
65
Cf. the attempt of Hans Medick, Naturzustand und Naturgeschichte der bugerlichen . Gesellschaft
.
(Gottingen, 1973) to reconstruct this development from Pufendorf via Locke to the Scottish moralists
(Adam Smith in particular) through the analysis of classical authors. The influence of physico-theology
was not considered. On this topic generally see Werner Philipp, Das Werden der Aufklarung . in
.
theologiegeschichtlicher Sicht (Gottingen, 1952); S. Stebbins, Maximum in Minimis. Zum Empirie- und
.
Autoritatsverst .
andnis .
in der physikotheologischen Literatur der Fruhaufkl .
arung (Frankfurt am Main, 1980);
.
Ulrich Krolzik, Die Sakularisierung .
der Providentia Dei-Lehre und das Naturverstandnis .
der Fruhaufkl .
arung
.
(Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1980). On its application to history and society, see Horst Dreitzel, ‘J. P. Sussmilchs
Beitrag zur politischen Diskussion der deutschen Aufkl.arung’ in Herwig Birg (ed.), Ursprunge . der
Demographie in Deutschland. Leben und Werk Johann Peter Sussmilchs. (1707–1767) (Frankfurt am Main
and New York, 1986), pp. 29–140.
66
Christian Wolff, Institutiones juris naturae et gentium (Halle, 1750), ed. M. Thomann (Hildesheim,
1969) (Gesammelte Werke, II, Lateinische Schriften, vol 26), n. 44 and ns. 133ff.
67
Ibid., n. 74 and n. 93.
68
Quoted from Christian Wolff, Grundsatze . .
des Natur- und Volkerrechts, transl. G. S. Nicolai (Halle,
.
1754, reprinted Konigstein/Ts, 1980), n. 136; for the theological foundation of natural law see the remarks
on marriage, ibid. ns. 854–874. Cf. n. 74.
69
Institutiones, n. 15 and ns. 38ff.
ARTICLE IN PRESS
divine creation—did not remain a separate field within natural law ethics, whose role
as a factor reinforcing the motivation to act morally was of particular significance.
The revolt against Wolff’s metaphysical and teleological rationalism immediately
rendered necessary a critical re-engagement with Hobbes. If the foundations of
natural law are not to be found in man’s rational nature, but empirically in the facts
of bodily and spiritual life, must not the drive to self-preservation and the ceaseless
striving after security through power again become the focus? The systematic further
development of the anthropological, anti-metaphysical philosophy of the late
.
Thomasius is particularly visible in the history of natural law which the Gottingen
jurist Johann Jakob Schmauss (1690–1757) inserted as a preface to his ‘New system
of natural right’ (1754). It was the most complete and—for several years—most
important description and critique of the whole metaphysical-scholastic natural law
tradition and of the principle of ‘socialitas’.70
Christian Thomasius, its ardent former defender, abandoned it again and came up
with brand new principles in his fundamenta juris naturae. He especially insisted on
the analysis of human nature and presented his own examples. And by
differentiating between the principiorum justi, honesti, et decori, he resolved the
confusion which had hitherto beset the whole world of morals. As a result, not only
have the shortfalls of the principii socialitatis been seen rather clearly [y]; but many
scholars have also approved of Thomasius’ new system, which is based on human
nature. His primary concern henceforth became analysing human nature according
to sensu communi (common sense) and according to that which every human being
feels in himself.71
Schmauss did not, however, follow Thomasius’ tendency fully to resolve natural
law (the basis of positive law) into mere guidelines. Instead, he sought a new
foundation. His own outline built on the social feelings and elementary individual
interests in a manner similar to the moral philosophy of Francis Hutcheson (1694–
1746), of which he was presumably unaware. Instinctive and interested sociability
directed towards actual fellow humans became, qua spontaneous component of free
70
.
Johann Jacob Schmauss, Vorstellung des wahren Begriffs von einem Recht der Natur (Gottingen, 1748),
.
and Neues System des Rechts der Natur (Gottingen, 1754), where natural law is seen as the freedom to live
according to one’s own nature, genius, and will; to this belongs an instinct of fairness towards others.
Similarly Johann Christoph Claproth, Grundriss des Rechts der Natur (Gottingen, . 1749); [Friedrich
Heinrich Strube], Recherche de l’origine et des fondaments de droit de la nature (Amsterdam, 1732, and St.
Petersburg, 1740). On his theory, see A. F. Glafey, Geschichte (n. 38), pp. 277–285. F. H. Strube went to
Russia where he called himself ‘Strube de Pyrmont’ after his native town. He became a councillor of state
and died ‘before 1790’. In St. Petersburg he published several more treatises on natural law in which he
extended his theory. See W. E. Buttler, ‘F. G. Strube de Piermont and the Origins of Russian Legal
History’, in Russia in the Age of the Enlightenmnet. Essays for Isabel de Madariaga, ed. Roger Barlett and
Janet M. Hartley (London, 1990), pp. 125–141. I am grateful to Dr. Michael Schippan of the Free
University, Berlin, for pointing out this article to me. Cf. Diethelm Klippel, Politische Freiheit und
Freiheitsrechte im deutschen Naturrecht des 18. Jahrhunderts (Paderborn, 1976), pp. 84–88; Johann Georg
Heinrich Feder, Grundriss der philosophischen Wissenschaften (2nd edition, Coburg, 1769), p. 340:
‘Schmauss caused a sensation in natural law: and the system of sentiments, which Hutcheson made
famous, is now dominant in almost all writings on ethics.’
71
Schmauss, Neues System, (see n. 70), Preface.
ARTICLE IN PRESS
self-realisation, the new foundation of natural law—a new variant of utilitarianism.

A logical consequence of this conception was the separation of ‘natural law’ as a
fundamental juridical sphere of the individual from state law, mainly because of the
historicaly variability of the latter. In conclusion, two different theories of this new
foundation of natural law, along with their connections to Hobbes, will be sketched
out.
(b) Seven years prior to the publication of Wolff’s teaching manual of natural law
in 1750, which was quickly translated into German in 1754, the treatise of the young
.
Gottingen professor of law, Johann Christian Claproth (1715–1748), had appeared.
His sharp criticism of Wolff’s ‘mathematical doctrine’, but most of all, however, of
his ethical rationalism already mapped out the fundamental positions of the
empirical moral philosophy of the late German Enlightenment (‘Popularphiloso-
phie’).72 Rationalism, Claproth maintained, not only led to insoluble theoretical
aporiae which darkened intuitive experience, such as the explanation of human
freedom. It was also just as ineffective in normal life73 as it was inhuman and
ridiculous, as Claproth vividly demonstrated in a successful satire on a lover of
philosophy.74 Moreover, rationalism altogether misapprehends the manner and
function of human reason by turning it into a ‘mystical person,’ in an ‘epic’ without
moral imperfection or shortcoming,75 whereas, in truth, reason has only an
instrumental significance.76
I live and have thus the permission to live. I feel a desire for pleasant sentiments
which I cannot through any power within me destroy, and for this reason I have
the privilege of realising them. These maxims are perhaps as certain as the
Cartesian cogito ergo sum. At least, I have not yet found anyone who has doubted
the first more than the last.
72
Johann Christian Claproth, Sammlung juristisch-philosophischer und critischer Abhandlungen
.
(Gottingen, 1743–43); see especially: ‘Vertheidigung der mathematischen Lehrart nach eben derselben
.
Lehrart abgefasst’, pp. 197–277; ‘Schreiben von den naturlichen Trieben des Menschen’, pp. 405–540;
.
‘Vom Nothrecht oder favore necessitatis’, pp. 541–554; Grundriss des Rechts der Natur (Gottingen, 1749).
73
Grundriss, p. 48: ‘Taking into account the nature of human reason, if one considers the time that
passes before we can make appropriate use of it following the best instruction, the circumstances that are
needed for us to accomplish something through it, one can easily see in what a highly miserable state we
would be if we took reason alone as our guide. In order to meet this gap we have been implanted with
drives which drive us to certain actions through immediate inner sentiments without prior reasoning.’
74
‘Schreiben’, in Sammlung (see n. 72), p. 442: ‘He loves the fair sex in no other way than when he
perceives particular perfections in it. However, he will only decide to contribute to the continuance of his
species after considering a string of arguments of which the last ensures him that ultimately he too is
responsible for doing his part in order to ensure that humankind not come to an end. He practices love for
no other reason than to fulfil this final purpose; and if he succeeds in producing an heir, his wife has
nothing more to hope from him.’
75
Ibid., p. 421ff.
76
‘Schreiben’, p. 523: ‘In my opinion, morality and natural law are nothing more than an embodiment
of the dictums of reason in the quarrels among our passions.’ Cf. Grundriss, pp. 75ff. Gradual development
and the dependence on ‘circumstances’ were important elements of Claproth’s concept of reason: ‘Reason
is natural to man; he thus needs to become what he is by nature’ (p. 101).
ARTICLE IN PRESS
The new method is the phenomenological, clear perception of ‘drives’ and their
sentiments: ‘I desire by no other means than by clarity and the indisputable, which
are to be found in the inner sentiments, to evoke applause.’77 Fundamental
systematic coherence, crucial for Wolff’s philosophy, becomes unimportant. As in
Wolff, however, it is still a precondition that ‘nature’ contain in itself the norms for
behaviour, the ‘inner foundation in the connection of body and soul’.78 The striving
for perfection is replaced by the striving for the sentiment of happiness: ‘Men by
nature desire a continuous, unbroken sequence of pleasurable sentiments, and this
state of mind we call ‘bliss’ or ‘happiness.’’79 The freedom ‘to act according to one’s
own and not someone else’s intentions’ is a fundamental part of the sentiment of
felicity, which, on the whole, consists of the satisfaction of ‘drives’ and ‘inclinations’
directed by reason. The primary sanctions of norms are the spontaneous sentiments
of happiness accompanying the corresponding actions; the happiness resulting from
these actions is only secondary. The duty of the realisation of individual happiness is
the foundation of rights in relation to others.80 This also holds for the state: ‘The sole
purpose of such an institution must be that each be hindered as little as possible in
his legitimate intentions.’81 What happiness precisely is arises from the natural
drives. The list of passions includes, besides the striving for self-preservation and
security, the striving for harmony and beauty, curiosity, and social passions such as
the striving for recognition (honour) and revenge, sexual and paternal love, and
above all, the ‘drive to derive pleasure from the well-being of all sensible creatures,
especially from fellow humans.’82 The immediate perception of God does not exist—
God is a concept of reason.83 The empirical observation of ‘love of mankind’ in the
human soul and in the history of mankind was Claproth’s most important objection
against Hobbes.84 He extended this discussion to the problem of suicide and to self-
defensive behaviour. Unlike his teacher Heinrich Kohler . in Jena, who defined the
77
‘Schreiben’, p. 408 and p. 416.
78
Grundriss (see n. 72), p. 20. Lengthy comparisons between humans, animals, and other living
creatures, with the tendency to emphasise common, but also specifically distinct features (biological
anthropology) were typical of empirical ethics. Cf. ‘Schreiben’, pp. 101ff.
79
Grundriss, p. 23. Following Christian Thomasius, who had introduced this method in his Fundamenta
juris naturae (Halle, 1705), p. 177, Claproth articulated a principle of action: ‘Do that which gives you
pleasant sentiments or ideas, avoid unpleasant ones’ (p. 39).
80
Ibid., pp. 24ff. ‘We are bound by the pleasant and unpleasant consequences of our actions’ (p. 90).
Claproth expressly emphasises that knowledge of the legislator (i.e., God) was not necessary for the
understanding of, and obligation to obey, ‘natural law’ (p. 31).
81
Ibid., p. 192.
82
Grundriss, p. 54. Claproth’s indebtedness to Shaftesbury and Hutcheson cannot be investigated here.
Claproth occasionally mentions Shaftesbury; however, the German context (Wolff, Kohler, . Schmauss)
figures more importantly.
83
It is from this line of argumentation, which was still dominant in late Enlightenment philosophy, that
we must understand Schleiermacher’s claim that a direct sentiment of God exists, which is also
.
independent of ethical feelings (Reden uber die Religion and die Bebildeten unter ihren Ver.achtern, 1799).
84
An extensive discussion can be found in Grundriss, pp. 56–66. A good glimpse into the state of
knowledge about Hobbes in this period can be found in A. F. Glafey, Geschichte des Rechts der Natur
(cf. n. 38), pp. 138–170.
ARTICLE IN PRESS
duty and drive to self-preservation as a norm,85 Claproth defended suicide: ‘After

careful consideration of the issue, the opinion must be adopted that life should be
preserved not for its own sake but for the sake of our happiness, of which it is the
foundation.’86 In this context Claproth also discussed ‘death for the fatherland’.
‘Fully considering the true teachings worthy of moral nature of the ancients, who
saw real joy only in noble deeds, one will not find it difficult to give up a life which
would no longer be pleasant after such a deed’, that is in a renunciation of the ‘love
of mankind’. Such individualistic and eudaemonistic understanding of natural law,
however, connected up once again, in the restricted field of compulsory rights, with
Hobbes’ conception. Since ‘perfect rights’, that is ‘compulsory rights’, were based
only on the defence of individual rights and security, the preservation of peace and
security above all stood in the centre of the organisation of the state. ‘Love of
mankind’ is not enforceable insofar as it extends beyond the principle of juridical
equality, the preservation of individual rights and their consequences, such as
contracts. The reduction of the state to the preservation of ‘compulsory rights’87
tended towards a limited Hobbesian conception, since it essentially dealt only with
the warding off of enemy disturbances and the preservation of external peace—with
the variation, however, that it was now valid to safeguard citizens from the abuse of
power by the state.88
.
(c) In their jointly composed textbook on natural law, produced at Gottingen in
1750, Gottfried Achenwall (1719–1772) and Johann Stephan Putter . (1720–1807)
took another path, more closely related to Wolff’s philosophy and to Grotius.89 In
relation to Wolff’s view of the fundamental human drive for perfection, they
distinguished self-preservation as an elementary pre-condition from the secondary
striving after perfection. They attributed the ‘perfect’ enforceable rights and duties of
men in its closer sense, the striving after self-preservation, and ascribed the
‘imperfect’ rights and duties as an area of ‘morality’ to the striving after perfection.
In regard to other developments of Thomasius’ ideas, both Achenwall and Putter .
stand closest to Gundling.90 ‘Conservatio sui’ and no longer, as in Pufendorf,
85
.
Heinrich Kohler, Exercitationes juris naturae (2nd edition, Halle, 1732). Cf., esp., Vom Nothrecht (see
n. 72).
86
Ibid., p. 523; cf. Grundriss, p. 114, and ‘Schreiben’, p. 439.
87
Johann Georg Feder, Grundlehren zur Kenntnis des menschlichen Willens (3rd edition, Gottingen, .
1789), p. 195: ‘The most suitable and now common meaning of the term natural law is the one which
defines it as the science of men’s natural, perfect, and external rights and duties.’
88
Cf. Grundriss (see n. 72), pp. 198ff. Kant reinforced the idea of viewing Hobbes’s principle of the state
of nature as an analysis, not of the ‘real’, but rather, of the ‘juridical’ state of nature (status juridicus), since
its key element was not the ‘conservatio’ but the freedom ‘that everyone wants to be the judge of what
justice in actions towards others consists of such that no one is given or has any security other than his
own power’ (‘Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft’, 1974, 3 St., Part One, N. 3; Werke (see
f.n. 23), volume 6, p. 99, note).
89
Johann Stephan Putter. and Gottfried Achenwall, Elementa juris naturae (Gottingen, . 1750); new
edition: Gottfried Achenwall, Johann Stephan Putter, . .
Anfangsgrunde des Naturrechts (Elementa juris
naturae), ed. & transl. Jan Schroder. (Frankfurt am Main, 1995: Bibliothek des deutschen Staatsdenkens,
volume 5).
90
.
Both Putter and Achenwall studied in Halle and Jena. They were presumably given the idea of
reconciling the views of Wolff and Thomasius by the Jena jurist Heinrich Kohler, . Exercitationes juris
ARTICLE IN PRESS
‘socialitas’ (which was only an accidental desire), was the fundamental principle of
law, law being, as in the Thomasian school, strictly distinguished from morality. An
anthropological foundation was thus created which did not rely on divinely ordained
duty or teleological metaphysics. ‘For this reason natural law is the science of the
perfect natural laws [y] The maxim ‘do not disturb the preservation of others’ is the
general, specific, fundamental, and proper principle of natural law.’91 From the right
of ‘conservatio sui’, subjective fundamental rights were derived which were
associated with the catalogue of subjective rights (taken up even by Wolff) and
which had been introduced into general jurisprudence since the sixteenth century,
amongst others, by Donellus, Althusius, and Grotius (equality, liberty, inviolability
of life and body, honour, property, defence of personal rights).92 In contrast to
Hobbes, neither Achenwall nor Putter . saw self-preservation as the immediate
foundation of the state. Rather, they inserted between individual and state the idea
of ‘social right’ (jus sociale),93 based on contract law, which legally regulated
common action for all goals for which needs arose or existed. Thus the ‘perfect’ right
entails not only self-preservation, but also protection, as the realisation of subjective
rights. ‘Jus publicum’ appears, then, as a specific form of social right, in which even
the promotion of the common good goes beyond the guaranteeing of self-
preservation. The tasks and organisation of the society of the ‘state’ are therefore
flexible, going beyond mere preservation of law and peace, and are not immediately
derived from the war of all against all. It was not until Kant that the tasks of the
state were again limited to the preservation of law and security. This conception of
the ‘Rechtsstaat’ was explicitly described by August Ludwig Schlozer . (1735–1809) as
.
‘barbaric’, as a characteristic element of primitive people. Schlozer was a somewhat
.
younger colleague of the two Gottingen authors.94 ‘Conservatio sui’ thus acted as the
fundamental principle of natural and positive enforceable law, however—in contrast
to Hobbes’ theory—not as the immediate and exclusive principle for the
organisation and tasks of the state. Since contract law was understood to be a
consequence of the law of liberty, in this construction freedom and contract law
naturae (Jena, 1729 and 1738), cf. the review of that book by Ernst Ferdinand Klein, Grundsatze . der
.
naturlichen .
Rechtswissenschaft nebst einer Geschichte dersselben (Halle, 1797; reprint: Konigstein Ts.
1979), p. 359, and Elementa (see n. 89) n. 27.
91
Elementa (see n. 89), ns. 211 and 213.
92
Elementa, ns. 214, 239, 247, 250, 252, 260, 266, 272, 282. Cf. Helmut Coing, ‘Der Rechtsbegriff der
menschlichen Person und die Theorien der Menschenrechte’, in Beitrage . zur Rechtsforschung, ed. Ernst
.
Wolff (Berlin/Tubingen, .
1950), pp. 191–206; Manfred Hermann, Der Schutz der Personlichkeit in der
Rechtslehre des 16.—18. Jahrhunderts und der Usus modernus (Stuttgart/Berlin, 1968), pp. 19–36 on
Donellus, Althusius, Grotius; pp. 43–49 on Wolff., F. Kohler, . and D. Nettelblatt; Horst Dreitzel,
‘Grundrechtskonzeptionen in der protestantischen Rechts- und Staatslehre im Zeitalter der Glaubensk-
a. mpfe’, in Grund- und Freiheitsrechte von der standischen
. . urgerlichen
zur spatb . .
Gesellschaft, ed. Gunther
.
Birtsch (Gottingen, 1987), pp. 180–214. Cf. also above p. 15 on Christoph Becmann, and p. 26 on
Christian Wolff.
93
Elementa (see f.n. 89), Bk. 2, ch. 1.
94
.
August Ludwig Schlozer, .
Systema politices (Gottingen, 1771): ‘Barbares civitates sunt, quae civibus
nihil praestant praeter securitatem ab interno et externo hoste: reliquas cultas vocamus’; cf. Schlozer, .
.
Staatsrecht (Gottingen, 1793), p. 17.
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assumed priority over immediate self-preservation, even though, firstly, they were
perceived as elements of it, and, secondly, in this context the legitimacy of contract
laws as complete laws was derivative. Nevertheless, subjects kept the right to
immediate self-preservation and corresponding rights, either through positive
‘fundamental laws’, or, generally, through the perpetual natural right of the people
to ‘conservatio sui’ should the state become their enemy.95 Although the idea of
‘conservatio sui’ was preserved as the anthropological foundation of all material
contents of the newly defined natural law, the primary means of its realisation was
not submission to a sovereign, but a contract freely agreed upon by individuals—a
triumph of Grotius over Hobbes. The tension between the founding of rights on
‘conservatio sui’ as the grounds of legitimacy for enforceable rights, on the one hand,
and the further rights extended by contract and legislation, on the other, was
preserved.
7. Conclusion: themes and stages of the reception
It is evident in retrospect that, on the one hand, the political philosophy of Hobbes
as a whole encountered only rejection. Even his closest disciple in Germany, J.C.
Becmann, did not notice, for example, that Hobbes’ political philosophy was rooted
in natural philosophy. On the other hand, it is evident that some fundamental
conceptions, often attributed to Hobbes in simplified and independent form as his
own ideas, became influential and/or were adopted in the highly differentiated
discussions on political philosophy. Among these the following are especially
noteworthy: the ontology of natural law norms with the tendency to find them
exclusively in anthropologically immanent and empirically observable structures; the
connection between self-preservation, eudaemonia, and sociability with the tendency
to reduce natural law to the rights of individual self-preservation and self-defence
against fellow humans as a source of the legitimate use of violence; the methods of
knowing natural law in opposition to those in metaphysical rationalism and to the
hypothetical, constructive method of empirical rationalism in the natural sciences,
which finally led to a form of phenomenological empiricism; the division of practical
philosophy into separate disciplines with independent principles, which also led to
the separation of ‘natural law’ as a theory of the enforceable fundamental rights of
the individual from ‘general state law’; the problem of religion in political philosophy
with the tendency to neutralise revealed religion and to downplay the function of
natural religion (‘deism’); the development of the conception of the state as a
political commonwealth with sovereign power as its institutional or personal
unifying principle; the theory of the origin of the state, which led from the process of
a natural socialisation (occasionally interrupted by man’s sinfulness) to the
conception of a gradual harmonisation of actual conflicts of interests. As in the
seventeenth century, the engagement with Hobbes in the early Enlightenment took
place within a pluralistic philosophical milieu. In this way, Pufendorf’s conceptions
95
Elementa, (see f.n. 89), ns. 797–799.
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and those of eclectic philosophy continued to have an effect on the later

Enlightenment and, via Crusius among others, they influenced Kant. Yet even the
psychological-anthropological empiricism of the disciples of the late Thomasius,
Christian Wolff’s physico-teleological ontology, and the historico-pragmatic
disintegration of natural law evolved as independent positions, all of which reacted
in their own way to the ever-present challenge of Hobbes.
Many of Hobbes’ contemporaries interpreted his political philosophy as a variant
of utilitarianism, that is as prudential teachings in the actual service of self-
preservation. If one takes this point of view as a guide, the history of the reception of
Hobbes can be summarised in five points:
First, the reception of Hobbes’s political theory in Germany must be seen in the
context of a wider debate on social Epicureanism or utilitarianism. In these debates,
the central issue was not the individual ‘voluptas’—usually ascribed to the classical
teachings of Epicurus—but the ‘conservatio sui’ and the ‘conservatio status sui’. In a
manner similar to nominalism in metaphysics and empiricism in epistemology, such
individualistic utilitarianism threatened the acknowledgement of rational universals.
In this case it challenged those of practical philosophy both in the Aristotelian form
of teleological structures of social reality and in the scholastic philosophia christiana
(in the Stoic form of natural or divine laws for practical reason as elaborated by
Grotius, Pufendorf, and their disciples). Sociability and obligations to the collectivity
were understood to be the artificial creations of individuals and actual groups of
people for the satisfaction of limited interests. At the same time, such worldly
concretism brought about the historical relativising of all material norms, except for
the formal principle of self-preservation; the universalising of norms could only
occur through the universalising of actual societies. In Germany, J.C. Becmann tried
to construct a philosophy of society and state on these foundations, albeit with
distinctive variations.
Second, eclectic philosophy did not resolve the conflict by introducing a hierarchy
of ‘values’—as in Catholic and Protestant scholasticism—, by the casuistic
reconciliation of opposites, as in neo-Stoicism, under the heading ‘prudentia mixta’,
or by the reduction to a unifying principle, as J.C. Becmann, following Hobbes, had
attempted. It was resolved instead by the division of practical philosophy into
relatively autonomous fields of different norms. In natural law, eclectic philosophy
followed Pufendorf’s conception with the law of ‘socialitas’ among humans qua
equals, a conception given by God and accessible through reason. In ethics, it
adhered to the principle of the preservation of the human being or of the
establishment of inner peace with God. And in ‘politics’ or ‘ars vivendi universalis’ it
followed utilitarianism which was explicitly understood as ‘reason of state’
.
(Statusrason) (J.F. Buddeus). The individualisation of rational law in eclectic
philosophy did not happen through the categories of interest and utility, but rather,
with reference to Pufendorf’s juridical concept of the person, through the category of
freedom:
For human nature is moral: and freedom is essential to moral nature. God does
not want man to be a correctly functioning machine driven solely by external
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force and pressure, but rather a free and reasonable creature living by knowledge
and his own understanding according to the prescribed order of means and ends.
Nor did he want supreme human power to be able to revoke the natural freedom
of human moral nature.96
The defence of the spontaneous nature of free will and its responsibility was one
of the central issues for eclectic philosophers in their discussions of Christian
Wolff’s metaphysical rationalism, for God, they maintained, desired the
perfection of man, ‘but without any force or necessity’. ‘For just this reason’,
Crusius wrote in 1744, ‘the right concept of freedom is one of the most important
parts of philosophy, for otherwise the whole edifice of human rules and acts is
turned upside down and the central purpose of the world overthrown’, that
purpose being the realisation of God’s final ends by free beings, ‘who are not in all
circumstances determined by him.’97
Third, Christian Thomasius, one of the founding fathers of eclectic philosophy,
destroyed its paradigm as early as in 1705 with his refounding of natural law which,
drawing on Hobbes, he reduced to prudential guidelines, and whose basic principle
he declared to be individual ‘utilitas’. He differed from Hobbes, however, in that he
regarded the acceptance (rooted in the passiones) of actual individuals as equals to be
an anthropological constant of their striving for earthly eudaemonia. The sentiment
of ‘love’ assumed a mediating function: ‘nemo amat alios nisi propter suam
felicitatem; nemo se solum amat, nisi amet multa extra se.’ ‘Jus naturale’ was reduced
to the innate fundamental rights of the individual. The foundation was thereby laid
for a new unity of practical philosophy on the basis of a psychologically grounded
eudaemonism, which included sociability, and which could also incorporate politics.
Fourth, the change in utilitarianism is most evident in the reception of Hobbes’s
theory of the state of nature and origin of the state. Apart from its being related in
Pufendorf and Bohmer. to a psychological motivation which did not constitute the
‘nature of things’, but only contributed to its realisation, this theory was increasingly
historicised, even by Gundling, who restricted it once again to general positive law
and restored it to its role of providing grounds of justification. Gundling
transformed the state of nature doctrine from the concept of preservation in the
war of all against all into the idea of the at least partial intersection of interests of
diverse individuals which, although based on inequality, was also rendered necessary
by mutual need as the basis of an ever more differentiated society and its
development. The rhetoric of ‘status-preservation’ was first infiltrated by the rhetoric
of ‘felicity’, and then superseded by it. An important argument in this transforma-
tion was the idea of a process moving forward by the smallest of steps which, in turn,
produced new forms of social inequality and concordance of interests in such a way
that violent conflicts became the exception rather than the rule. The state was no
longer understood as an institution that, through its monopoly on violence, first
made possible a peaceful society, but as the expression and instrument of the
96
.
Friedrich August Muller, Einleitung (see n. 51), p. 1026.
97
Christian August Crusius, Anweisung (see n. 51), p. 256.
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conciliation of interests between the ranks and interests of the citizens. The most
influential factor in this transformation was, however, the spread of the physico-
theological interpretation of history and society—the idea that God progressively
directs the latter, as he does nature, through the limited as well as through the bad
actions of human beings, to order and prosperity according to at least partially
empirically recognisable laws. With this conception egoism and limited interests
could become causes of progress and the common good, and could also further the
realisation of ethical and social norms. This was a conception which was applied to
the development of society, the state, and, above all, the economy and whose support
for the new utilitarianism was decisive.
Fifth, the success of Christian Wolff’s rationalist revival of Aristotelianism was
primarily based on his concurrence with physico-theology. Wolff’s fundamental
ethical concept was no longer the striving for ‘self-preservation’ or ‘preservation of
status’ (nor the striving for ‘peace of mind’ through obedience to the divine law) but
rather ‘perfection’, a formula which could combine individualistic, social, and
cosmological teleology, and yet remain dynamic and progressive. Perceived as
backward—because undifferentiated and metaphysical—this rationalism met with
severe opposition. It was rebelled against, on the one hand, by the interpretation of
juridical natural law (in connection with Pufendorf) as a divine commandment, as a
‘duty’ in the further development of eclectic philosophy, as in Crusius, and, on the
other hand, by those teachings which continued the destruction of theistic
philosophy of law that had begun with the later Thomasius. The revolt of the
eudaemonism of spontaneous drives and sentiments, in which the empirical moral
philosophy of the late Enlightenment was grounded, also had to deal anew with the
reduction of life to self-preservation traditionally ascribed to Hobbesian philosophy.
The philosopher and jurist J. C. Claproth is a good example of the relating of self-
preservation to a wide spectrum of possibilities for human happiness: self-
preservation assumed an important, if subordinate, place as a precondition and
instrument of the more relevant drive for eudaemonia. The limiting of the functions
of the state to the defence of individual liberty from attacks and enemies carried
forward Hobbes’ conception of politics, albeit in a different form, namely, through
the incorporation of ‘fundamental laws’ and constitutional safeguards against
.
‘despotism’. Achenwall and Putter’s natural law theory, which emerged about the
same time, employed the category of ‘conservatio sui’ as a means of separating
juridical natural law from moral philosophy and endowing it with its own
foundation as a theory of enforceable rights. Through the extension of its
fundamental categories, they connected this ‘natural law’ to contract law, following
Grotius, in order that the striving for a far-reaching eudaemonia could be
incorporated into state law. The restriction of the state to the ‘Rechtsstaat’ was
not consistently called for until Kant. Analogously to Hobbes, however, this
restriction also once again focused ideas about law and the state on defence against
enemies.

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History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 255–289

The reception of Hobbes in the political

1. The philosophical context

The ‘new’ philosophy emanating from the Central German universities of

Becmann belonged, like Pufendorf, to the ﬁrst generation of German Protestant

2. First reactions to Hobbes in Germany: Aristotelianism, natural law theory,

This sharp condemnation, although formulated in a letter, stands out from

inﬂuence of Grotius in Reformed Germany, and to which even Christian Thomasius

3. A disciple: Johann Christoph Becmann

Johann Christoph Becmann was named by his contemporaries, alongside the

self-preservation, and developed according to the natural forces of things. In these

4. Reception and rejection in Pufendorf

The fundamentals of the relationship of ‘eclectic philosophy’ to Hobbes were laid

5. The repercussions of Hobbes’ ideas in eclectic philosophy

remained an exception. The dualism of historical interpretation is manifest, for

individualism.51 Yet understanding the moral law as the autonomous self-legislation

integritatis’).56 In this context, the question of the reception and transformation of

In this way, the concept of preservation was transformed into a concept of

6. Displacement and return: Wolff and his opponents

self-realisation, the new foundation of natural law—a new variant of utilitarianism.

duty and drive to self-preservation as a norm,85 Claproth defended suicide: ‘After

7. Conclusion: themes and stages of the reception

and those of eclectic philosophy continued to have an effect on the later

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