Göttinger Naturrecht. 300 Jahre Gottfried Achenwall (1719 – 1772) – eine Einführung

Abstract

This article serves as an introduction to this special issue on Gottfried Achenwall (1719-1772). Section I briefly sketches Achenwall’s intellectual biography, outlines the disciplines he taught at Göttingen and closes by highlighting the importance and extensive use of Achenwall’s textbooks, in particular his Ius naturae, at universities in eighteenth-century Germany. Section II provides an overview of Achenwall’s natural law doctrine as found in the first edition of his natural law textbook, the Elementa iuris naturae (1750), touching on the principle of obligation and the system of duties, innate and acquired rights, the law of societies, public law and the justification of state power. In section III, we turn to Immanuel Kant’s engagement with Achenwall, pointing out general features of Kant’s critical reception of Achenwall by means of a number of examples before discussing particular differences in the justification of legal coercion, the conception of the household society and marriage law, and, finally, the discussion of the right of resistance. Section IV provides a brief overview of the subsequent articles that deal with Achenwall’s theory of natural law.