Samuel von Pufendorf

You had had a lot of wars, religious wars between different factions, and so there was a desire to further refine their political theology so that you would reduce the amount of conflict and turmoil that you had.

And so I see them as primarily applying a lot of those principles from the natural law tradition, from Grotius and Pufendorf and Vattel and other guys- Um, to the, uh, to the American context.

So I do not see them as denying the Reformation doctrine, um, the reformed view of political theology.

I see them as applying it within the American context.

There was the law of nations.

This is an era, you know, when law of nations was more like the fundamental principles contained in Vettel and Grotius and Pufendorf.

But these were sort of unwritten principles that lawyers were familiar with that sometimes could get into admiralty or related things.

There was the law of the law merchant was another important category like this.

It is matter of wonder, therefore, that the word right has not yet been wholly excluded from the policy of war as pedantic, and that no state has yet been bold enough openly to declare itself in favor of such exclusion.

For Hugo Grotius, Pufendorf, Vattel, and others—all miserable comforters, unfortunately, though their philosophically or diplomatically conceived codes have not and cannot have the least legal force because states as such are not under any common outward restraint—are nevertheless always sincerely quoted to justify any outbreak of war.

No example, however, is to be found, on the other hand, where a state has been induced by arguments supported by the theories of these influential men to desist from any warlike undertaking.

This attachment shown by every state, at least professedly, to the idea of right shows that there is to be found in man, though at the time dormant, a moral principle of superior force which leads him to strive for the mastery over the evil principle which is undeniably in him, and to expect such mastery from others.

Now, that could mean any of a variety of things, but when you drill down, you see that what he means by it is our capacity to be in relations of mutual accountability, to hold one another accountable.

And Pufendorf says the same thing.

But that's, you know, that, that's Anscombe's critique.

So I start off the first volume talking about Anscombe's challenge, and that the moderns are defined by trying to meet that challenge, but they also create the challenge in a way because they're-- there's-- it's their theories that she wants to object to or to challenge.

I mean, somebody can lock you up, but that's not a f- way of holding you accountable.

Right.

Pufendorf has this thought, I call this Pufendorf's point in the second person's standpoint, that in order to be obligated, you have to be able to hold yourself accountable in your own thought.

But you can only hold yourself accountable to things that you can know.

Hobbes would have it that man is naturally void of fear, and always intent upon attacking and fighting.

An illustrious philosopher thinks on the contrary, and Cumberland and Pufendorf likewise affirm it.

that nothing is more fearful than man in a state of nature, that he is always in a tremble, and ready to fly at the first motion he perceives, at the first noise that strikes his ears.

This indeed may be very true in regard to objects with which he is not acquainted.