Article - Pufendorf and Religious Toleration
History of Prussia (1618 - 1788)
Pufendorf's Major Works
De jure naturae et gentium libri octo (On the Law of Nature and Nations in 8 Books) 1682, and in 1673 a résumé of it under the title De officio hominis et civis ("On the Duty of Man and Citizen"), which, among other topics, gave his analysis of just war theory. In De jure naturae et gentium, Pufendorf took up in great measure the theories of Grotius and sought to complete them by means of the doctrines of Hobbes and of his own ideas on jus gentium.
De habitu religionis christianae ad vitam civilem (translated as Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion in Reference to Civil Society), 1687. In this work Pufendorf traces the limits between ecclesiastical and civil power. This work propounded for the first time the so-called "collegial" theory of church government (Kollegialsystem), which, developed later by the learned Lutheran theologian Christoph Mathkus Pfaff, formed the basis of the relations of church and state in Germany and more especially in Prussia.
Pufendorf's Life
Pufendorf was born into a middle class Lutheran family in Saxony. He was educated at the University of Leipzig. He served King Charles XI of Sweden during a stay in Denmark. Later, he served both Frederick William and his son, Frederick I, the King in Prussia. He wrote histories of both Charles' family and the Hohenzollerns. He died at age 62 of an illness.
Pufendorf's philosophy
Pufendorf's thought is situated in post-Westphalian Europe, as the Holy Roman Empire underwent a reconfiguration of power relationships among its quasi-autonomous constituent states (Austria, Bavaria, Palatinate, Saxony, Brandenburg, and others), while maintaining a guarded posture toward external, competing powers such as France, England, the United Provinces, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, and Spain. Its main goals were to avoid relapse into confessional warfare between German Protestants and Catholics, and to ward off the respective French and Ottoman threats on its western and eastern borders.
In this context Pufendorf developed a theory about the moral relationships of agents (individuals and groups), the authority and duties of states, and the lawful interactions among these. His chief objective, too, was to avoid destructive social conflict and the devolution on any level into the antagonistic and, he thought, self-defeating condition known as the state of nature.
Pufendorf's approach was secular, non-metaphysical, and anti-authoritarian; it eschewed religious/theological appeals, scholastic dogma,teleology, and the frequent mix of these that appealed to many German thinkers, Catholic and Protestant alike. Because of it, Pufendorf is known as a voluntarist in ethics, a sovereignty theorist in politics, and a realist in international relations theory. His kind of natural law is called ‘modern’ or ‘Protestant,’ in contrast to the metaphysical, neoscholastic, rationalist, or even Platonic version of the genre represented not only by the School of Salamanca (Suarez, Vitoria) but also by Leibniz and then Christian Wolff.
While Pufendorf is known for influence in the fields of international law and Just War theory, here we will focus on his influence on religious toleration and his work that constitutes some of the earliest writings on separation of church and state.
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Pufendorf, unlike Hobbes, held that the state of nature was basically, though not always, peaceful. He believed that man had a natural right to "natural religion" as revealed by his reason alone. Like most of his contemporaries, including Locke, Pufendorf was convinced that the belief in God’s existence and in His providence was a basic requirement of man as a moral agent. Being without this minimum of natural religion, atheists and blasphemers were deemed incapable of a moral life and excluded from toleration. And each man in the state (or society) had a moral dignity that was to be protected as much as his right to life;
"Human nature belongs equally to all men, and since one cannot live a social life with someone by whom one is not considered at least a man, it follows... that everybody must esteem and treat other men as his equals..."
Pufendorf held that man had a natural instinct for sociability. This contradicted Hobbes' view that man was intrinsically self-interested. His view influenced the Scottish Enlightenment sentimental moralists like Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith, and also other 18th century thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Pufendorf argues that the state is not founded for the sake of religion, since religion is part of natural human freedom that cannot be delegated to the sovereign. The end of civil society consists exclusively in the security of the citizens, while religion has to be left to the care of the individual. For that reason, respect for religious freedom is one of the duties of the sovereign. Relying on the contractual theory of the state, Pufendorf denounces the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, arguing that the sovereign transgresses the limits of his power when he extends his rule to religion. If the ruler persecutes subjects because of their religion, it cannot be considered an act of legitimate rule but an unjust, hostile, or tyrannical act.
As regards public law Pufendorf, while recognizing in the state (civitas) a moral person (persona moralis), teaches that the will of the state is but the sum of the individual wills that constitute it, and that this association explains the state. Pufendorf's state was a "natural one" with moral properties of its own.
Pufendorf powerfully defends the idea that international law is not restricted to Christendom, but constitutes a common bond between all nations because all nations form part of humanity.
In Law of Nature, Pufendorf had also argued that the sovereign can be unjust to his subjects when he transgresses the limits of his power. However, in that work he did not acknowledge a right to resistance but insisted that the people have to obey the ruler, even if he degenerates into a tyrant. The new persecutions by the French monarch led Pufendorf to conclude in the present work that, when rulers transgress their bounds, the subjects have a right to defend their religion, even by the force of arms.
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Conclusion:
Because of the clarity and comprehensiveness of his works, their intellectual acuity, and their polemical edge and consequent notoriety, they were translated into many European languages and thus provided many of the basic concepts and distinctions operative in the 18th-century discourse about morality, society, politics, history, and international affairs. Indeed, both directly and through his many editors, translators, and imitators, Pufendorf was largely responsible for the so-called ubiquity of natural law as a shared discourse during the following century.
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