PUFENDORF, SAMUEL von. — Historian, philosopher, and jurist, born at Dorfchemnitz in Saxony on 8 January 1632, died at Berlin on 26 October 1694. Having completed his studies at Leipzig and Jena, from 1657 he was a tutor in Copenhagen, where he prepared his first work, Elementorum iurisprudentiae universalis libri duo (The Hague 1660).
Called to the University of Heidelberg, he was entrusted with the chair of natural and international law, established there for the first time; there he wrote, under the pseudonym Severinus de Monzambano, De statu imperii Germanici (Geneva 1667); subsequently, having moved to Lund in Sweden, he wrote the work that remained his most famous, De iure naturali et gentium libri octo (Lund 1672), abridged the following year in De officio hominis et civis iuxta legem naturalem libri duo (there 1673); he responded to the controversies aroused by these writings with various pamphlets, later published under the title Eris Scandica (Frankfurt 1686). The following year saw the publication of De habitu religionis christianae ad vitam civilem (Bremen 1687), in which P. upheld the principle of religious freedom and religious toleration; but as early as 1677, having been appointed historiographer of the Kingdom of Sweden, he had devoted himself to historiographical activity, which he continued from 1688 in Berlin, where he remained until his death; among his numerous historical works, the following should be mentioned: Einleitung zur Historie der vornehmsten Reiche und Staaten in Europa (Frankfurt 1682), Commentariorum de rebus Suecicis libri XXVI (Utrecht 1686), De rebus gestis Frederici Wilhelmi Magni (Berlin 1695), De rebus gestis Frederici III Electoris Brandenburgici (there 1784).
P.’s doctrine concerning natural law is directly connected with that of Hugo Grotius (v. GRAMONT, HUID), although he intensifies Grotius’s rationalistic and antitheological attitude, in an attempt to found natural law exclusively upon reason. For him, natural law is wholly distinct from religion, because its task is to establish the norms of conduct in this life and it concerns only external actions. Besides Grotius, HOBBES, THOMAS (v.) is manifest, although he opposes to his empiricism (v.) rationalism (v.), which gives his doctrine a pronouncedly abstract and anti-historical character. Although not very original, this doctrine is developed with great systematicity, the fruit of P.’s intention to construct a system of natural law possessing the same rigor as that of physical science. In it, much more than in Grotius’s doctrines, all the characteristic theories of
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natural-law theory appear: that of the state of nature, conceived anti-historically as preceding political coexistence and configured, unlike what Hobbes had done, as a peaceful state, even if afflicted by a condition of insecurity; that of the social contract, by which, in order to secure the guarantee of their rights, human beings constitute the State by submitting to a political authority; that of the superiority of the State over the Church and of freedom of conscience. Finally, for P., State (v.) is a moral person, whose will, deriving from the conventions of several subjects, is considered the will of all for the purpose of achieving peace and common security.