Samuel von Pufendorf

The radical ideas of the French Revolution are generally regarded as the offspring of the theory of social contract. However, even though the Revolutionaries cherished Rousseau’s legacy, the period was not without instances in which this legacy could be subject to variation and the notion of social contract could be attributed, in a decidedly negative tone, less to Rousseau than to Hobbes. In this context, the present study of Jean-Baptiste Salaville’s L’Homme et la société, ou nouvelle théorie de la nature humaine et de l’état social (1799) demonstrates that the idea of natural sociability could provide an opportunity to elaborate a radical republican future without the notion of social contract. Salaville’s political vision, built on the tradition of natural jurisprudence, posited a new idea of the general will and empiricist legislation in the last days of the French Revolution.

This is a 'precis' or somewhat deep dive into the reason for the nomination of Louisiana attorney Warren Perrin for a lifetime achievement award. His 1988 Petition for Apology from the Queen on behalf of the Acadians has resonance beyond Louisiana and Canada. Mr. Perrin's Petition prompts comparison with the current Hong Kong protests and the efforts of Mauritius, which recently obtained a ruling from the International Court of Justice that decolonization is not yet complete until Great Britain returns Diego Garcia, among the Chagossian island archipelago. This of course has serious implications for the 'American pivot' to the Indo-Pacific in light of a growing Chinese presence. It also implicates the next "Grotian moment' and a realization the next tweak to the 'law of nations' will likely be less 'Western' in its approach.

Table of contents

1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism; 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy; 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a form of life; 4. Epicurus and ethics as care for oneself; 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions; 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism; 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism; 8. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelianism; 9. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism; 10. Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian moral doctrine and Aristotelian ethics; 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry; 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living
13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism; 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality; 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism; 16. Richard Price and intuitionism; 17. Adam Smith and sentimentalism; 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism; 19. Immanuel Kant, the practical use of reason and judgment; 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and a critique of Enlightenment universalism; 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment; 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism; 23. Edmund Husserl and the a priori of action; 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism; 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics; 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism; 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy; 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics; 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics; 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics.

Samuel Pufendorf is known for his normative natural law philosophy, and particularly for his theory of sociability. This article concentrates on a topic that has received very little attention - his theory of the motivating character of passions in social life. It will demonstrate that individually and politically governed passions play a central role in Pufendorf's description of the structure of human societies. I argue that for Pufendorf the norms of sociability are effective in social life because social interaction, guided by political governance, enables people to moderate their antisocial passions and habituate themselves to sociable passions.

A short series including a distinguishing terms, i.e. ‘moral,’ ‘ethic,’ and ‘Justice.’ I shall defend using animals for human consumption, the current popular problems of big game hunting, and a possible solution to the issues giving as close to a win-win as possible throughout this work. Overall, the running theme will contend that humans are not “equal” to other species of animals, especially not under the law.

There is obviously soo much more that can be said on this topic. Hopefully, this sparks thought provoking conversation.

Notions such as 'states-system' and 'international system' are central to IR. Yet, they have been neglected in our study of conceptual history. This paper focuses on the 17th-century debate about the status of the Holy Roman Empire as a political unit. During that time, several key figures of political philosophy such as Althusius, Pufendorf and Leibniz attempted to theorise the Empire and, in the process, the term 'states-system' was employed as a category of analysis. Althusius pioneered integration theory and proposed federalism as a description of the historical and legal formation of the Empire. Pufendorf did not find any relevance in the existing categories and argued that the Empire was "a monster", but almost a 'states-system'. Leibniz rejected Pufendorf's solution and claimed that the Empire was a federal union. In conclusion it is argued that, although they were discussing the same object, the three thinkers substantially differed in their analyses because of their own commitments to distinct philosophical systems. All three contributions are extremely relevant to the understanding of both IR as a discipline and our current political reality.

In Kant on Conscience Emre Kazim offers the first systematic treatment of Kant’s theory of conscience. Contrary to the scholarly consensus, Kazim argues that Kant’s various discussions of conscience - as practical reason, as a feeling, as a power, as a court, as judgement, as the voice of God, etc. - are philosophically coherent aspects of the same unified thing (‘Unity Thesis’). Through conceptual reconstruction and historical contextualisation of the primary texts, Kazim both presents Kant’s notion of conscience as it relates to his critical thought and philosophically evaluates the coherence of his various claims. In light of this, Kazim shows the central role that conscience plays in the understanding of Kantian ethics as a whole.

Adam Smith closes the first chapter to Theory of Moral Sentiments, 'Of Sympathy', with a harmless enough assertion: 'We sympathize even with the dead'.  Death is not a topic that much interests Smith in Theory of Moral Sentiments. With the exception of a few miscellaneous thoughts in the text, the one paragraph Smith devotes to it is the extent of his interest. It is, however, a matter of interest in his Glasgow lectures on jurisprudence. To the extent we wish to observe the rights of the dead, how far may we extend these rights without infringing upon the rights of the living?  Which is the question: what are the demands the dead may make upon the living?

journal article published in Korean - 근대 초기 유럽 자연법의 세계관과 정치사상

Natural jurisprudence was one of the most important intellectual traditions, along with republicanism, that weighed upon early modern European thought. If Republicans were concerned with popular Libertas and the health of states, the self-imposed task of natural lawyers was to find out what, in God’s or Reason’s eyes, was right and what was wrong. To live freely in a dynamic society was the goal of republican thought, whereas the priority of natural jurisprudence was to lead a peaceful life in a just society ruled by law. To understand the latter tradition in historical terms, one must grasp its Christian roots and moral worldview. Beyond the post-Enlightenment and French revolutionary concepts of natural rights and democracy appropriated by reformers, this article delineates the basic tenets of natural law from a historical perspective, dealing with its most crucial components such as duties and rights, human nature, social design, and political thought.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2018.1492422

Istvan Hont’s classic work on the theoretical links between the seventeenth-century natural jurists Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf and the eighteenth-century Scottish political economists remains a popular trope among intellectual and economic historians of various stamps. Despite this, a common criticism levelled at Hont remains his relative lack of engagement with the relationship between religion and economics in the early modern period. This paper challenges this aspect of Hont’s narrative by drawing attention to an alternative, albeit complementary, assessment of the natural jurisprudential heritage of eighteenth-century British political economy. Specifically, the article attempts to map on to Hont’s thesis the Christian Stoic interpretation of Grotius and Pufendorf which has gained greater currency in recent years. In doing so, the paper argues that Grotius and Pufendorf’s contributions to the ‘unsocial sociability’ debate do not necessarily lead directly to the Scottish school of political economists, as is commonly assumed. Instead, it contends that a reconsideration of Grotius and Pufendorf as neo-Stoic theorists, particularly via scrutiny of their respective adaptations of the traditional Stoic theory of oikeiosis, steers us towards the heart of the early English ‘clerical’ Enlightenment.

The paper explores theories of moral obligation from those of late scholastics such as Francisco Suarez and Gabriel Vasquez to those of Samuel Pufendorf and John Locke.  The theories of Pufendorf and Locke are contrasted.  Although these two theories appear similar, there is a profound difference between them.  In Pufendorf as in a scholastic such as Suarez, practical reason is seen as involving two distinct kinds of justificatory force or modes of justificatory support, recommendation and demand; and moral obligation is identified, not as a reason-giving property of actions, but as one of these justificatory forces, the force of demand, a force that directly binds the will.  Whereas in Locke there is only one justificatory force, that of recommendation; and moral obligation is no more than a reason-giving property, the property of being commanded by a punitive God, among the many that generate this force.  In Locke as in much subsequent English-language philosophy, moral obligation ceases to be a justificatory force that directly binds the will, and comes to be no more than a reason-giving property of the voluntary actions that the will causes and motivates.  The paper expresses doubts about whether this development has been a genuine conceptual advance, and explores the problems it raises.

In this paper, I develop three ideal types of early modern federal theories: sovereignty relativizing federalism, sovereignty pooling federalism, and bottom-up federalism. Each of these types respond to a different political effect of the development of the modern state: organ sovereignty, hostile geopolitical environment, and disempowerment of the society as a corollary to organ sovereignty, respectively. Each of these types conceives of the federation as an alternative to the state. I compare and contrast these types along the lines of implementation of the federal principle of self- and shared rule, the criteria of evaluation of federal arrangements, and the normative implications.

Abstract: Nell’ampia letteratura che, nel corso degli ultimi decenni, ha esplorato a fondo le pieghe degli scritti bobbiani, affiora soltanto a tratti un’indagine sistematica dei rapporti del filosofo torinese con i classici del pensiero filosofico-politico e filosofico-giuridico moderno. Il presente contributo suggerisce l’esigenza di una nuova attenzione in tal senso: in particolare, esso muove da una ricognizione analitica dei sei lavori raccolti nel volume "Da Hobbes a Marx. Saggi di storia della filosofia", nel quale Bobbio raccolse ricerche concepite nell’arco di quindici anni di insegnamento universitario e di cui nel 2015 ricorrerà il cinquantenario. È in quelle pagine, infatti, che il filosofo torinese, in un’Italia appena uscita dal conflitto mondiale e alla ricerca della propria identità politico-culturale dopo l’esperienza del Fascismo, guardò retrospettivamente alle origini contraddittorie della modernità mappandone, proprio come un cartografo, elementi di continuità e rottura – in primo luogo, l’oscillazione tra il primato del diritto naturale, da una parte, e l’egemonia dello jus positum, dall’altra. Proprio questa profonda (e mai appagata) ricerca di senso circa le ragioni della crisi culturale del proprio tempo ispira il confronto di Bobbio con «le due grandi concezioni mondane della storia» – il giusnaturalismo e lo storicismo dialettico – che a suo avviso innervano lo sviluppo tutt’altro che lineare della modernità e che, di riflesso, orientano il suo confronto con il pensiero di Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Hegel e Marx attraverso le acquisizioni della più recente storiografia filosofica italiana e internazionale di quegli anni.

Table of contents:
1. Bobbio e i moderni: testi e contesti
2. Giusnaturalismo e storicismo dialettico: i due volti della modernità
3. Il pensiero giuridico hobbesiano sotto processo: un 'cavallo di Troia' nella cittadella giusnaturalistica?
4. Dal giusnaturalismo impuro di Hobbes a quello pienamente moderno di Locke
5. Da Locke a Kant: la costruzione della libertà dei moderni
6. Dai giusnaturalismi allo storicismo dialettico: la modernità figlia di Hegel e Marx
7. Considerazioni conclusive

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With the publication of the papers of the First Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy in 2017, we accomplished overcoming such unfruitful divisions as the time-honoured interpretive distinction between “rationalists” and “empiricists”, liberating our perspectives from the rigid prejudices of simplifying handbooks. We also prepared the frame for further in-depth investigations in other areas of Early Modern thought, such as are presented in our volume. It comprises papers based on the contributions to the Second and Third Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, held on 26–27 October 2017, and on 8–9 October 2018 at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. The topics of both Seminars are relevant not only for the early modern philosophy but also for our contemporary philosophical attempts to find access to present reality: constructions of personal identity, and the multifarious relationship between theories and practices of natural right and the claims to live up to our natural emotions. When composing this volume, our aim was not to present a systematic survey of any of these areas of topics in early modern philosophy. Rather, our modest goal was to foster collaboration among researchers working in different countries and traditions. Many of the papers published here are already in implicit or explicit dialogue with others. We hope that they will generate more of an exchange of ideas both in early modern scholarship and in several related areas and disciplines.

Probablemente no haya un término más utilizado dentro del discurso de los derechos humanos que el de la dignidad humana. Se trata de una idea que preside y fundamenta los sistemas constitucionales contemporáneos, constituyendo así en un referente imprescindible para la legislación y la aplicación del Derecho.

Set within the framework of international intellectual history, the present article focusses on the propaganda campaign undertaken by the Company of Scotland to prove the legality of its settlement in the Darien province. It first shows how a group of Scottish authors appropriated sixteenth-century natural law arguments from Spanish sources to reject the claims based on the Bulls of Donation and conquest, which underpinned Spain's sovereignty over its American territories. Acting individually and collectively, anonymously and under pseudonyms, pro-Darien propagandists instrumentally quoted and restated the contents of major works from Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de Las Casas. Additionally, the Scots also deployed the theories elaborated by Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf to refute discovery and occupation as further means of acquisition of American lands. In contrast with Spanish expansionism, the Scottish colony eventually grounded its claims on the consent of the indigenous Cuna rulers and on the official treaties recognizing the latter's sovereignty over Darien, emulating the Dutch commercial model of empire and colonial practices.

Differences between the 17th century ‘new moral science’ and Scholastic Natural Law Theory derived primarily from the sceptical challenge the former had to face. Pufendorf ‘s project of a 'scientia practica universalis' was the paramount expression of an anti-sceptical moral science. A need to counterbalance undesirable implications of extreme voluntarism may account for much of 17th and 18th centuries developments in ethics and politics. Scottish natural jurisprudence, an expression of such a quest for a third way between scepticism and extreme voluntarism, is less secular and more empirical than received wisdom admits of the project of a normative theory of social life on an empirical basis yielded as a side-effect a systematic, self-contained, and empirical economic theory. The main tool for building such a theory, namely a view of societal laws as embedded in trans-individual mechanisms, derives from the voluntarist view of natural law as ‘imposed’ law.

The paper considers Jean Barbeyrac's theory of permissive natural law, in particular its significance for his account of natural property rights. This interpretation contributes to current debates on permissive natural law in the early modern period by arguing that Barbeyrac’s theory was more significant than hitherto acknowledged. The conceptual framework provided by Barbeyrac’s theory of permissive natural law is crucial to understanding the ways in which his will-based theory of property departs not only from the consent-based theory of Samuel Pufendorf but also from the labor-based theory of John Locke with which he is most commonly associated.

The article explores the genre of official historiography as an instrument of statecraft in early modern Europe. For an adequate grasp of the character, functions and impact of official histories we need to gain a better understanding of the nature of the relationship between the historiographer and the early modern state that hired them. This article studies some of the most central issues in this relationship, focusing on the institutionalisation of the office in a pan-European perspective. It investigates the functions that the official histories served, the goals and mutual expectations of the historians and the states, and the methods used for achieving these goals. The article proposes a synthetic approach, combining a case study of
Samuel Pufendorf, the official historiographer in Sweden and Brandenburg, with a comparative look at the development of the institution and the genre in other European countries.

Common possession of the earth was a prominent idea in seventeenth century modern philosophy. In this paper I will argue that Kant not only provides a secularized version of common possession of the earth but also radically departs from the conception of his natural law theory predecessors. I argue that Kant’s account of cosmopolitan right seeks to address the same problem as Grotius’ right of necessity, namely the implausibility of assuming inflexible acquired rights when this would go against the rationale for introducing these rights. However, while Grotius intended to excuse violations of private property in cases of necessity, Kant restricts his discussion to the right of host peoples to reject entrants in their territory. I show that in Kant’s account, denying life-saving occupation of space to another being in principle just as entitled as anyone else to any place of the earth would be to contradict the very justification for the territorial rights of states. This is because the permission to control territory and the right of the involuntary visitor to be admitted are based on the same legal foundation or Rechtsgrund, namely, the original community of the earth.

This paper analyzes the relation between basic religious motifs of theoretical thought, general ontology and their specific use in 'international' political theory at the onset on the Modern Era. The analysis is based on Herman Dooyeweerd's reformational philosophy in identifying the basic assumptions on the origin of life, coherence and diversity of reality in several trends of thought. The Greek and Roman classical legacy, in combination with ancient Christian concepts, is emphasized, namely in terms of motifs such as Nature and Grace, guidelines of scholastic worldview, thus influencing its perspective of Christianity, of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Papacy. Reformed Protestantism adopted a more radically Biblical set of assumptions which culminated in a ontologically plural perspective of social authority and political community, as well as of the empire. Christian humanism, and some Protestant thinkers, was also heavily influenced by the motifs of Nature and Grace, but now with a strict separation between both 'logics'. The theorization of an 'internal logic' for each of these spheres gave origin to a reinterpretation of Nature in classical Humanism, according to a 'mechanistic' perspective of reality with its ideal of control. Another religious motif of this secularized form of humanism was the concept of Liberty and of personality. This geometrical theoretical mode influenced ideas on the social contract and its international analogy, leading theoricians to fiery debates on the classification of the Empire.

A. Ser humano, moralidad y derecho. 1. Naturaleza humana y derecho. 2. Libertad humana y derecho B. Sociedad humana y derecho. 1. Igualdad y respeto. 2. Igualdad y seguridad En el De iure naturae et gentium (1672), Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-1694) consagra el derecho natural moderno. Un punto de diferencia respecto a su predecesor consiste en su concepción de la naturaleza humana. No surge como un fenómeno innato que se impone a los

Julkaisematta jääneessä muistiossaan Mietteitä oikeuden yleiskäsitteestä (1702-1703?) G. W. Leibniz muotoilee uudelleen Platonin Euthyfron-dialogissa esitetyn kuuluisan kysymyksen. Hän kirjoittaa: ”Myönnetään, että kaikki mitä Jumala tahtoo, on hyvää ja oikein. Sen sijaan kysytään, onko se hyvää ja oikein siksi että Jumala niin tahtoo, vai tahtooko Jumala sitä koska se on hyvää ja oikein. Eli kysytään, onko hyvyys tai oikeus jotakin mielivaltaista, vai koostuvatko ne asioiden luonnetta koskevista välttämättömistä ja ikuisista totuuksista, kuten luvut ja suhteet.”  Universaaleja, ikuisia totuuksia puolustava filosofi ei voi hyväksyä ensin mainittua vaihtoehtoa. Hänen mukaansa ”Se toden totta tuhoaisi Jumalan oikeudenmukaisuuden. Sillä miksi ylistäisimme häntä oikeudenmukaisista teoista, jos oikeudenmukaisuuden käsite ei hänen tapauksessaan lisää mitään teon käsitteeseen? Ja sanonta stat pro ratione voluntas, minun tahtoni käyköön perusteesta, on todella tyrannin motto.”
  Leibnizin kritiikki on suunnattu erityisesti hänen aikalaisiaan René Descartesia, Thomas Hobbesia ja Samuel Pufendorfia vastaan. Hän ei voi hyväksyä näkemystä, jonka mukaan oikeudenmukaisuuden mitta on vain Jumalan tahto. Perustan on löydyttävä ikuisista totuuksista, jotka ovat myös Jumalan oikeudenmukaisuuden standardi. Erityisen kuuluisaksi tuli Leibnizin kritiikki Pufendorfin näkemyksiä kohtaan, sillä Pufendorfin laajalle levinneen teoksen De officio hominis et civis ranskalaisen laitoksen neljännen painoksen toimittaja Barbeyrac liitti siihen Leibnizin kiistakirjoituksen, joka tunnetaan lyhyellä nimellä Monita (Epistola viri excellentissimi ad amicum qua monita quaedam ad principia Pufendorfiani operis de officio hominis et civis continentur, 1706) ja  puolusti Pufendorfia Leibnizia vastaan.
  Leibnizin onnistui kuitenkin ilmeisesti osoittaa eräs heikkous Pufendorfin näkemyksissä, jota Barbeyrac ei pystynyt sivuuttamaan: tämän mukaan Jumala on saman aikaan sekä ylin tuomari että lakien laatija. Siten Leibnizin näkökulmasta Jumala on tyranni – hänen tahtonsa on oikeuden ja etiikan mitta ja koska hän on kaikkivaltias, hän voi pakottaa ihmiset noudattamaan sellaista oikeudenmukaisuutta, joka on hänen mieleistään. Koska Jumalan yläpuolella ei ole Pufendorfin mukaan mitään, hän voi toimia aivan mielivaltaisesti. Leibnizin kritiikki kiteytyy Pufendorfin epäselvään erotteluun ulkoisen ja sisäisen velvollisuuden välillä, joka jättää hänen näkemyksensä arvoitukselliseksi.
      Tutkiskelen tässä esitelmässä oliko Leibnzin kritiikki johdonmukainen ja oikeutettu. Onko Pufendorfin näkemyksissä heikkous, jota hän ei itse huomannut? Vertailen myös asiaa koskevia eri kommentaareja (mm. Kari Saastamoinen, Petter Korkman, Fiametta Palladini) ja arvioin Leibnizin kritiikin reseptiota Pufendorf-tutkimuksessa. 

In English: This paper discusses Leibniz's views on justice and especially the Divine Command-theory. Of special interest if Barbeyrac's defense of Pufendorf against Leibniz's critcism. I attemp to reflect how Leibniz would have reacted to Barbeyrac's interpretation of Pufendorf's views. An international version of this paper is planned.

Immanuel Kant and Samuel Pufendorf were both exercised by the relationship between politics, morality and lawful authority; a relationship that goes to the heart of the sovereign state's existence and legitimacy. However, while Kant defended the authority of the moral law, believing morality provides higher authoritative norms than the sovereign state, Pufendorf defends the political morality of authority, believing the sovereign state should submit to no higher moral norms. The rivalry between these two positions is reprised in current debate between cosmopolitanism and statism over humanitarian intervention. Arguing against statism, this article defends a Habermasian-style critical international theory which affords a 'cosmopolitanism without imperialism'. 4 Helen Thompson notes this unfortunate association in a most thoughtful and non-dogmatic defence of statism, 'The Case for External Sovereignty'

While histories of human rights have proliferated in recent decades, little attention has been given to the history of thinking about duties to protect these rights beyond sovereign borders. We have a good understanding of the history of duties of sovereign states to ensure the safety and well-being of their own citizens and of the right of other states to forcefully intervene when these duties are violated. But the story of the development of thinking about duties to assist and protect the vulnerable beyond borders remains to be told. This article defends the importance of excavating and examining past thinking about these duties. It then sketches key aspects of Western natural law thinking about such duties, from Francisco de Vitoria through to Immanuel Kant, claiming that such study holds the promise of exposing from where ideas that prevail in international law and politics have come and retrieving alternative ideas that have been long forgotten but that may reward renewed consideration. It concludes by briefly outlining how three such retrieved ideas might be of particular use for those seeking to push international law and politics in a more just direction today.

I argue in this paper that Immanuel Kant's account of the moral wrongness of contempt in the Metaphysics of Morals provides important resources for our understanding of the nature of moral subjectivity. Although Kant typically emphasizes the subject's position as autonomous addressor of the moral law, his remarks on contempt bring into relief a dynamic relationship at the heart of practical subjectivity between the addressor and addressee positions. After tracing the development of reflection concerning the addressor and addressee positions in early modern philosophy, beginning with Francisco Suarez and Samuel Pufendorf, I articulate and defend what I take to be a Kantian conception of the relation between those positions. More specifically, I argue that to be a moral subject at all it is necessarily to position oneself as the addressor of the moral law, but that one must at the same time maintain oneself in the addressee position, resisting the full conversion to the addressor position that autonomy seems to demand.

In this paper, I develop three ideal types of early modern federal theories: sovereignty relativizing federalism, sovereignty pooling federalism, and bottom-up federalism. Each of these types respond to a different political effect of the development of the modern state: organ sovereignty, hostile geopolitical environment, and disempowerment of the society as a corollary to organ sovereignty, respectively. Each of these types conceives of the federation as an alternative to the state. I compare and contrast these types along the lines of implementation of the federal principle of self- and shared rule, the criteria of evaluation of federal arrangements, and the normative implications.

Scottish natural jurisprudence, which tried to find a middle way between skepticism and extreme voluntarism, is less secular and more empirical than received wisdom admits. There emerged, as one of its 'accidental' outcomes, a systematic, self-contained and empirical economic theory from the search for an empirically based normative theory of social life. The basic assumption of such a theory, namely, the notion of societal laws as embedded in transindividual mechanisms, derives from the voluntarist view of natural law as 'imposed' law.

Most modern discussions of human dignity give historical pride of place to Immanuel Kant and his idea that dignity was grounded in human rational agency or autonomy. This paper challenges this practice by articulating a “second story” about dignity – a story that also unfolded during the Enlightenment, but which grounded dignity in human passionate agency. Thus it is suggested that a range of thinkers including Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Smith’s French translator, Sophie De Grouchey, all seemed to have inclined in this new direction. However, above all others, this essay lauds Denis Diderot’s contribution to this second story of human dignity. Correspondingly, the essay culminates in an examination of Diderot’s wide-ranging inquiries into human nature, politics, and social theory.