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.

DEFINITION II

By the object of moral actions is meant all that with which they deal.

• The morality of the object from imposition.
• Division of the object.

1. In the next place, this object itself partakes of the designation of morality, and, considered in this respect, is itself also called moral. Concerning this in general it must be noted that its morality depends on imposition, that is, on the decision of free agents as such, and these free agents either of their own free will, or from some congruence of the nature of a thing with imposed morality, together with a tacit or expressed mutual agreement which has been entered into, have imposed morality upon things and persons, and have determined that definite effects should follow it.1 And this is a consideration which can be applied even to the morality of the actions themselves. But there due note must be made of the fact that, when morality is said naturally to inhere in a certain action, this is not to be understood as though it meant that the morality results from the physical principles of the thing or from the very nature of the action in itself; but that it does not derive its origin from the arbitrary imposition of men, but only from the disposition of God himself, who has so formed the nature of man that particular actions of necessity are or are not congruent with this nature.2 And, of a truth, that He made man in this fashion and not in another depended entirely upon His own will. But if the morality of actions which are called naturally honourable or base were to derive their origin from the nature of these acts in themselves, and not from the will of the Creator, to which, nevertheless, the nature of the rational creature has been attuned, no reason could be given why particular acts may be moral for men, although they are not moral for brutes. So, moreover, that state of man which is called a state of nature is in fact so from imposition, yet not the arbitrary imposition of men, but that of the Creator himself, who destined men thereto at their very creation.

2. Now one object of moral actions is suppositive, the other positive, at least in a moral sense. The former is called status; the latter is divided commonly into persons and things.3

[1. ] Pufendorf’s distinction of natural and moral entities and his doctrine of the latter’s production by imposition goes back to Erhard Weigel. See Analysis Aristotelica, sect. I, chap. iii, §2.

[2. ] Pufendorf here turns against the doctrine of perseitas, that certain actions are noble or base in themselves without any antecedent imposition, a point advocated by Hugo Grotius in JBP, I.i.10. That subject also plays a major role in Pufendorf’s struggle with Protestant orthodoxy. See his criticism of Valentin Veltheim in Eris, “Specimen controversiarum . . .,” chap. v.

[3. ] This threefold division originates in Roman law. See Justinian, Digests, vols. 2–11 of The Civil Law, trans. Samuel Parsons Scott (Cincinnati: Central Trust Company, 1932), I.v.1 (hereafter known as Dig.): “Gaius, Institutes, Book I. All the law that we make use of relates either to persons, things, or actions.”