In the Leviathan, power can be understood in two different senses, which are carefully discriminated in its Latin version by the use of the terms potentia and potestas to translate, depending on the context and the type of power concerned, the English power. Potentia and potestas, although types of power of a different nature – one, the physical power that bodies have to take effect on each other; the other, the juridical power, out of which legal effects as justice itself (...) come about –, are mutually implicated in the intertwining of juridical representations. This article aims to explore the consequences that follow from this ambivalent concept of power to think about justice and natural right. (shrink)

What is commonly called a right has since about 1980 increasingly come to be called a subjective right. In this paper the origin and rise of this solecism is investigated. Its use can result in a lack of clarity and even confusion. Some aspects of rights-concepts and their history are also discussed. A brief postscript introduces Leibniz's Razor.

Hegel continues to be credited with the discovery of a "master-slave dialectic". Critics, however, have established that there was no "master-slave dialectic" but rather a Knecht, that is, servant or footman, with the latter a member of an abstract relationship of Herrschaft-Knechtschaft, which is central to Hegel's idea of the journey from dependence to independence. This "primitive scene" sets up a cycle for the whole paradigm, which is a reformulation of the victory over animal life and its appetites, and a (...) reformulation of the birth of nations. Hegel followed Aristotle here; those who risked their own life are given recognition as masters and those who chose to preserve it at the cost of their freedom, are servants. (shrink)

Samuel Pufendorf’s major work on natural law, De jure nature et gentium, included a long chapter on the power of the civil sovereign to determine the value of citizens. There, Pufendorf identified several forms of esteem (existimatio), according to which human beings are ranked in social life. The article argues that behind Pufendorf’s discussion of this topic was the idea that the way people esteem others and want others to esteem them has profound consequences for maintaining peaceful social life and (...) is therefore morally regulated by the fundamental natural-law duty to maintain sociality. The article explores the key elements of Pufendorf’s multifaceted analyses of esteem, making apparent how they were connected to sociality. The article also analyses Pufendorf’s argument for the duty to esteem other humans as one’s equals by nature, questioning the view that this relied on the idea of human dignity understood as an intrinsic value of human beings. Pufendorf’s argument for this duty was a part of same project as his analyses of existimatio, namely, to define how natural law regulates the way human beings esteem each other, and it relied on his observations concerning the character of human self-esteem. (shrink)

Pufendorf makes a clear distinction between the physical constitution of human beings and their value as human beings, stressing that the latter is justified exclusively by the regular use of the free will. According to Pufendorf, the regular use of free will requires certain inventions (divine as well as human) imposed on the free will and called moral entities. He claims that these inventions determine the moral quality of a human being as well as the standards according to which human (...) beings and their actions are able to be judged. This article examines the normative aspects of Pufendorf’s concepts of moral value and moral estimation in regard to the epistemological question of the accessibility of moral entities for human beings. In the first part, it reconstructs Pufendorf’s doctrine of moral entities and the place of moral estimation in this doctrine. In the second part, it presents Pufendorf’s account of the moral philosophy as a science in order to explain his theory of moral normativity as imposed, and the role of a person in regard to the own moral status. In the last part, it illustrates some consequences in regard to the problem of slavery in Pufendorf. (shrink)

Collection of papers presented at the 2nd and 3rd Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.

Is genuine self‐creation – understood as self‐directed value‐acquisition – possible? Many philosophers think not. I disagree. I explain why a recent attempt to solve the problem fails and use it to motivate an alternative proposal: indirect evaluative voluntarism. Indirect evaluative voluntarism is not only well‐suited to explaining how self‐creation is possible; it also unifies two important aspects of our doxastic lives, viz. responsibility for the acquisition of both evaluative and non‐evaluative beliefs.

Research Articles Adam Mossoff, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

In treating human nature as a ‘moral entity’, imposed by God for reasons into which man could have no direct insight, Samuel Pufendorf reconfigured the architecture of natural law thought in a fundamental way. For this meant that rather than deducing norms from a nature in which they had been embedded by God and could be discerned by self-reflective reason, man had to derive them by observing the requirements of the exigent condition in which he happened to find himself; and (...) it further meant that such observation would be gathered via erudite citation of humanist authorities, rather than from philosophical reflection or introspection. As a result of this reconstruction, Pufendorfian natural law was opened to the normative structure of historically existing juridical-constitutional orders, for which it supplied both a propaedeutic and an abstract rationale. At the same time, however, theological and philosophical forms of natural law, based on normative moral anthropologies, continued unabated, this giving rise to a partitioning of the field into an introspective philosophy of law, and an observational legal humanism. (shrink)

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] During the last few years, it has become usual to turn to some seventeenth century readings of the traditional idea of an original common possession of the earth for philosophical aid to explain and support the rights of persons in situations of extreme need, including refugees. Hugo Grotius’s conception of this idea is one of the most cited ones. In this paper, I hold that a Grotian reading of the idea of an (...) original common possession of the earth is not a fruitful principle if we want to elaborate a solid defence of the rights of the ones in need. I reconstruct and analyse the role this idea has in Grotius’s theory of private property and present objections to it from a Kantian perspective. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Samuel Pufendorf’s major work on natural law, De jure nature et gentium, included a long chapter on the power of the civil sovereign to determine the value of citizens. There, Pufendorf identified several forms of esteem (existimatio), according to which human beings are ranked in social life. The article argues that behind Pufendorf’s discussion of this topic was the idea that the way people esteem others and want others to esteem them has profound consequences for maintaining peaceful social life (...) and is therefore morally regulated by the fundamental natural-law duty to maintain sociality. The article explores the key elements of Pufendorf’s multifaceted analyses of esteem, making apparent how they were connected to sociality. The article also analyses Pufendorf’s argument for the duty to esteem other humans as one’s equals by nature, questioning the view that this relied on the idea of human dignity understood as an intrinsic value of human beings. Pufendorf’s argument for this duty was a part of same project as his analyses of existimatio, namely, to define how natural law regulates the way human beings esteem each other, and it relied on his observations concerning the character of human self-esteem. (shrink)

1. To be moral is to be moved to act by reason; and to be moved to act by reason is to be moved by the good. This venerable platitude raises many questions. Some are about the nature of goodness it...

La posesión común de la tierra fue una idea prominente en la filosofía moderna del siglo xvii. En este artículo, sostendré que Kant no sólo propuso una versión secular de la posesión común de la tierra, sino que también se diferenció de forma radical de la concepción iusnaturalista de sus predecesores. Propongo que la revisión kantiana del derecho cosmopolita se dirige al mismo problema que el derecho de necesidad de Grocio, a saber, la implausibilidad de asumir derechos adquiridos absolutos cuando (...) esto contradice la razón por la que se introducen esos mismos derechos. Sin embargo, mientras que Grocio pretendió excusar violaciones de la propiedad privada en casos de necesidad, Kant limitó su discusión al derecho de rechazar la entrada de personas en un territorio. Muestro que para Kant, negar la ocupación del espacio que puede salvar la vida a otro ser humano que está, en principio, tan legitimado como cualquier otro a tener un derecho en la tierra está en contradicción con la justificación misma del derecho territorial de los Estados. Esto se debe a que el permiso para controlar el territorio y el derecho de los visitantes involuntarios a ser admitidos en una región están basados en el mismo fundamento legal o Rechtsgrund, a saber, la comunidad original de la tierra. (shrink)

No Leviathan o poder (power) pode ser entendido em dois sentidos diferentes, cuidadosamente diferenciados em sua versão latina pelo emprego dos termos potentia e potestas para traduzir, a depender do contexto e do tipo de poder em questão, o inglês power. Potentia e potestas, embora sejam tipos de poder de natureza distinta - um, o poder físico que os corpos têm de produzir efeitos uns nos outros; outro, o poder jurídico, do qual resultam efeitos jurídicos como a própria justiça -, (...) estão mutuamente implicados na trama das representações jurídicas. Esse artigo pretende explorar as consequências que se seguem deste conceito ambivalente do poder para se pensar a justiça e o direito natural. (shrink)