The recovery of natural law: Hochstrasser's history of morality

Abstract

This book is discussed in the context of the ongoing recovery of a distinctively 'modern' or post-scholastic form of natural law thought. Hochstrasser's contribution to this recovery is to stress the linguistic-conventionalist character of post-metaphysical natural law in the German early Enlightenment. On this basis, he is able to show how Samuel Pufendorf and his followers largely escape the charges of moral arbitrariness and political tyranny levelled at them by such metaphysical rivals as Leibniz. The article concludes by briefly indicating one of the major alternatives to Hochstrasser's interpretation, giving a sense of the ongoing debate surrounding the construction of political legitimacy in post-scholastic natural law.