Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law

by Samuel Pufendorf , Edited by James Tully , Translated by Michael Silverthorne

• ISBN13: 9780521359801
• ISBN10: 0521359805
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1991-07-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

On the Duty of Man and Citizen (1673) is Pufendorf's succinct and condensed presentation of the natural law political theory he developed in his monumental classic On the Law of Nature and Nations (1672). His theory was the most influential natural law philosophy of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries. He advanced a compelling reply to Grotius and Hobbes, and in doing so, set the intellectual problems for theorists such as Locke, Hutcheson, Hume, Rousseau, and Smith. In the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War, Pufendorf sets forth a classic justification of the early modern enlightened state and of the proper relations of moral and political subjection to it. This lucid and historically sensitive translation by Michael Silverthorne, (a classicist and a specialist in Roman Law and early modern political thought) is the first since the early twentieth century. James Tully's introduction sets the text in its seventeenth-century context, summarises the main arguments, surveys recent literature on Pufendorf, and shows how Pufendorf transformed natural law theory into an independent discipline of juristic political philosophy which dominated reflection on politics until Kant.

Table of Contents

Main works by Pufendorf and abbreviations	ix
Chronology of Pufendorf's life and publications	xi
Editor's introduction	xiv
Bibliography	xxxviii
Bibliographical note	xli
Translator's note	xliv
ON THE DUTY OF MAN AND CITIZEN ACCORDING TO NATURAL LAW	1	(178)
Author's dedication	3	(3)
Author's preface	6	(11)
BOOK I
On human action	17	(10)
On the rule of human actions, or on law in general	27	(6)
On natural law	33	(6)
On man's duty to God, or on natural religion	39	(7)
On duty to oneself	46	(10)
On the duty of every man to every man, and first of not harming others	56	(5)
On recognizing men's natural equality	61	(3)
On the common duties of humanity	64	(4)
On the duty of parties to agreements in general	68	(9)
On the duty of men in the use of language	77	(3)
On the duties involved in taking an oath	80	(4)
On duty in acquiring ownership of things	84	(6)
On the duties arising from ownership in itself	90	(3)
On value	93	(4)
On contracts which presuppose value in things and on the duties they involve	97	(8)
On methods of dissolving obligations arising from agreements	105	(3)
On interpretation	108	(7)
BOOK II
On men's natural state	115	(5)
On the duties of marriage	120	(4)
On the duties of parents and children	124	(5)
On the duties of masters and slaves	129	(3)
On the impulsive cause of constituting the state	132	(3)
On the internal structure of states	135	(4)
On the functions of the sovereign power	139	(3)
On the forms of government	142	(4)
On the characteristics of civil authority	146	(2)
On the ways of acquiring authority, particularly monarchical	148	(3)
On the duty of sovereigns	151	(4)
On civil laws in particular	155	(3)
On the right of life and death	158	(5)
On reputation	163	(3)
On the power of sovereign authority over property within the state	166	(2)
On war and peace	168	(5)
On treaties	173	(2)
On the duties of citizens	175	(4)
Index	179