Pufendorf’s Doctrine of Sovereignty and its Natural Law Foundations

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to feature Pufendorf’s concept of sovereignty within the context of his natural law doctrine and the theory of moral entities and to reconsider the degree to which this conception of sovereignty may be regarded as ‘secular-absolute’. I do not wish thereby to deny the modern aspects in his theory that may justify such a valuation. In separating natural law from moral theology, Pufendorf excluded the concept of man’s divine image and the concern for his eternal felicity as something unattainable by human reason. This also entailed a tendency to restrict law to external actions,1 leading to a separation of the political realm from the realm of inner conscience in order to render the former absolute in relation to moral critique and clerical interference. My concern is to show the features in Pufendorf’s thought that fall out of this picture. In particular I shall be concerned, first, with the persistence of a teleological conception of nature, its remaining importance for Pufendorf’s understanding of man’s nobiliores facultates and the relation of these faculties to the moral and civil obligation; and, second, with the persistence of a theonomic form of natural law obligation in the civil state and its importance for the obligative force and ‘Amtsverständnis’ (understanding of office) of sovereign power.KeywordsMoral ScienceCivil StateSovereign PowerLegal CapacityAdventitious PersonaThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.