The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• A Note On the Text
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• The Elements of Universal Jurisprudence By Samuel Pufendorf Book I
• Definition I: By Human Actions Are Meant the Voluntary Actions of a Man In Communal Life Regarded Under the Imputation of Their Effects.
• Definition II: By the Object of Moral Actions Is Meant All That With Which They Deal.
• Definition III: Status Is a Suppositive Moral Entity In Which Positive Moral Objects, And, Above All, Persons, Are Said to Be.
• Definition IV: A Moral Person Is a Person Considered Under That Status Which He Has In Communal Life.
• Definition V: A Moral Thing Is a Thing Regarded In Respect of Its Pertinence to Persons.
• Definition VI: A Title Is a Moral Attribute By Which Distinctions Are Marked Among Persons In Communal Life According to Their Esteem and Status.
• Definition VII: Authority Is an Active Moral Power By Which Some Person Legitimately and With a Moral Effect Is Able to Perform a Voluntary Action.
• Definition VIII: Right Is an Active Moral Power, Belonging to a Person, to Receive Something From Another As a Matter of Necessity.
• Definition IX: Esteem Is the Value of Persons In Communal Life In Accordance With Which They Are Fit to Be Placed Upon an Equality With Other Persons, Or to Be Compared With Them, and to Be Rated Either Above Or Below Them.
• Definition X: Worth Is the Moral Quantity Or Value of Merchandise Or Things, and of Actions That Are Good For Man In Communal Life, In Accordance With Which They Are Fit to Be Compared One With Another.
• Definition XI: Principles of Human Action Are Those Things From Which It Springs and Upon Which It Depends, and By Which a Human Action Is Brought to Completion.
• Definition XII: Obligation Is an Operative Moral Quality By Which Some One Is Bound to Furnish, Allow, Or Endure Something.
• Definition XIII: A Law Is a Decree By Which a Superior Binds One Subject to Him to Direct His Actions According to the Command of the Superior.
• Definition XIV: Authority Is an Active Moral Power By Which Some Person Legitimately and With a Direct Moral Effect Can Perform an Action. 1
• Definition XV: The Affections of a Voluntary Action Are the Modes Through Which It Is Denominated Or Defined In a Certain Manner.
• Definition XVI: A Good Action Is One Which Agrees With Law; a Bad Action Is One Which Disagrees With the Same.
• Definition XVII: A Just Action Is One Which of Free Moral Choice Is Rightly Directed to That Person to Whom It Is Owed.
• Definition XVIII: The Quantity of Moral Actions Is the Estimative Measure By Which They Are Said to Be of a Certain Degree.
• Appendix to Definition Xviii In Which the Moral Sphere Is Explained
• Definition XIX: By the Effect of a Moral Action Is Meant That Which Is Produced By It.
• Definition XX: Merit Is an Estimative Moral Quality Resulting to a Man From an Action Which He Is Not Bound to Perform, In Accordance With Which There Is Owed Him an Equivalent Good On the Part of the One In Whose Favour That Action Was Undertaken.
• Definition XXI: Demerit Is an Estimative Moral Quality Resulting to a Man From a Bad Action Through Which He Is Under Obligation to Make Amends For the Injury Done to a Second Person Thereby.
• The Elements of Universal Jurisprudence By Samuel Pufendorf Book Ii
• Axiom I: Any Action Whatsoever That May Be Directed According to a Moral Norm, Which Is Within a Man’s Power to Do Or Not to Do, May Be Imputed to Him. And, On the Contrary: That Which Neither In Itself Nor In Its Cause Was Within a Man’s Power May Not
• Axiom II: Any Person Whatsoever Can Effectively, Or With the Obligation to Perform Them, Enjoin On Someone Subject to Himself Those Things to Which His Authority Over the Other Extends Itself.
• Observation I: A Man Can Judge Properly of Things Apprehended By the Power of His Intellect.
• Observation II: From an Internal Principle a Man Can Move Himself to Undertake Or to Leave Undone a Certain Action.
• Observation III: A Man Is Destined By Nature to Lead a Social Life With Men.
• Observation IV: Right Reason Dictates That a Man Should Care For Himself In Such a Way That Human Society Be Not Thrown Into Disorder.
• Observation V: The Law of Nature Alone Is Not Directly Sufficient to Preserve the Social Life of Man, But It Is Necessary That Sovereignties Be Established In Particular Societies.

ABBREVIATIONS

WORKS OF SAMUEL PUFENDORF

OTHER WORKS

THE PRESENT WORK

THE TWO BOOKS

OF

THE ELEMENTS OF

UNIVERSAL JURISPRUDENCE

BY

SAMUEL PUFENDORF

Together with

an Appendix on the Moral Sphere

and Indexes

Latest and most accurate edition

cambridge

From the House of John Hayes

Printer to the most Celebrated University

1672

At the Charges of John Creed, Bookseller, Cambridge

TO THE MOST SERENE PRINCE AND LORD, THE LORD KARL LUDWIG, COUNT OF THE RHENISH PALATINATE, LORD HIGH TREASURER AND PRINCE ELECTOR OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, DUKE OF BAVARIA, ETC., MY MOST CLEMENT LORD.

Most Serene Prince Elector, Most Clement Lord, Bold indeed is the undertaking of this book, which, without any confidence in its own merit, ventures to approach so great a Prince, and is not ashamed to draw upon itself by its own act those eyes before whose radiance they who appraise themselves according to the consciousness of their own insignificance cannot but blush. And to some it might have seemed more modest to inscribe a less august name at the forefront of so slight a work, were it not a well established fact that those lofty minds beam more blandly upon many men, the more unaffected they perceive to be the estimate which the same have made of their humanity. Your far-famed benevolence towards letters and those that cultivate them, most serene prince, makes us believe that to have made what is no more even than an effort in letters has the value of a commendation in Your eyes; and, although we cherish Your greatness with a religious veneration, we have no fear that the same will suffer any diminution in accepting these meagre offerings. Indeed, You increase the glory of Your eminence rather than diminish it, in that from time to time You condescend to such interests of ordinary men, just as the sun, which does not disdain to pour forth his light even for the low-lying lands of earth to use, retains his glory none the less undimmed on that account.

The kind of portrait of a great Prince which others industriously limn,1 this we may behold at close range most felicitously expressed in You. The blood descended through so many heroes and the dignity but one removed from supreme, together with all the other characteristics which have been set forth as the sole ground for laudations in the case of those whom blind fates, as it were, seem to have thrust forward to such position, we may regard as residing properly and preeminently in You, abounding as You do in Your own resources. You can of Yourself bestow something upon Your ancestors, because through You they have been the glory not of their own ages only; and so easy is it for You to clear Your name of indebtedness to fortune, that fortune herself would be in debt to You, if, indeed, it might please her to bestow her blessings in proportion to each individual’s deserts. Your glory springs up for You out of Your very self. A mind sublime, elevated, of which fortune herself should stand in fear, penetrating moreover, profoundly versed in law human and divine, and one which, if any can, in itself meets the measure required of a Prince. This mind of Yours it is which the age admires in You beyond all else, and proudly displays among its ornaments. And yet that same mind, when it has fulfilled the duty of a Prince, turns aside also to the pleasures of study, and applies with the utmost felicity that well-known vigour to every kind of Wisdom. You could not fill the intervals in Your occupation with a more holy pleasure, nor ought the leisure moments of a mind so noble to be otherwise employed. Here You discover with what sincere veneration the memory of men like Yourself is cherished by those who have no further profit from flattery; and while You hear and see those silent ones, You cease to have need of the ears and eyes of others through which full often facts are presented to Princes in a distorted manner. Nay more, by Your patronage no less than by Your example You cause these studies to flourish among Your friends. The shattered shrines of Wisdom You restore with a most liberal hand,2 and, that nothing be lacking to their splendour, You do not regard it as beneath Your high estate to grant them also the favour of Your presence. By such an honour You give courage to the timid Muses,* nor can their own fortune fail longer to satisfy them after the favour of so great a Patron dispenses itself upon such terms of intimacy.

I too have been persuaded by that humanity of Yours, although I have never yet experienced it, to feel that I should be doing no wrong against Your dignity, if I should venture to offer you this little book with all seemly veneration. While according to the scanty measure of my ability I have striven to set forth in this the principles of universal justice, I foresee for it an approach to Your presence, which, by virtue of the very subject-matter, is the more easy, the more confident Themis† is in claiming by her own right admission to the inmost audience of Princes.

Your Serenity’s
most devoted

Samuel Pufendorf.

Leyden,September 1, 1660.

[1. ] Pufendorf refers to the traditional ethics of the “mirror for princes,” which develops an ideal of the ruler and outlines the virtues and duties required of him. It aims at the ruler’s self-perfection as the basis of good government.

[2. ] Pufendorf alludes to the reconstruction of Heidelberg’s university after the Thirty Years’ War, one of the most successful aspects of Karl Ludwig’s consolidation policy in the Palatinate. A liberal policy in appointments and the statute reform of September 1, 1672, led to a quick revival of academic life and a growing attraction of Heidelberg for students and scholars. See Ludwig Häusser, Geschichte der rheinischen Pfalz (1845; repr. Heidelberg: Winter, 1924), vol. 2, pp. 599ff; Meinrad Schaab, Geschichte der Kurpfalz (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1992), vol. II, pp. 139ff.

[* ] The word is here used in the rarer sense of men of letters themselves. Cf. Milton, Lycidas:

• So may some gentle Muse
• With lucky words favour my destined urn;
• And as he passes, turn
• And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.—Tr.

[† ] As the personification of Law and Justice.—Tr.