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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.
Acknowledgements
We presented a first draft of this paper at the conference Recognition and Respect in Early Modern Philosophy (University of York, 2019). We are grateful to the organizer Tim Stuart-Buttle and participants for stimulating discussions. A second draft of the paper was discussed at the political philosophy workshop (University of Amsterdam, 2019) organized by Johan Olsthoorn and we thank participants of that event. Thanks also go to two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 On Pufendorf’s philosophy and its historical significance, see Seidler, “Pufendorf’s Moral and Political Philosophy”.
2 The original language edition Pufendorf, De jure naturae is separated by a semi-colon from the translation. Our policy is to use Seidler’s translation of De jure in Pufendorf, The Political Writings (hereafter, PW) whenever possible and rely on Oldfathers’ translation in Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature (hereafter, LNN) only in passages omitted by Seidler.
3 Before De jure, Pufendorf discussed existimatio shortly in his early Elementa jurisprudentiae universalis (1660) and more extensively in the dissertation De existimatione (1667). Analysis in De existimatione is largely incorporated in De jure.
4 Recent studies dealing with Pufendorf’s theory of esteem include Blank, “Pufendorf and Leibniz on Duties of Esteem”, 196–202; Haakonssen, “Natural Law and Moral Personhood”, 6–9; Haara, Pufendorf’s Theory of Sociability, 99–136; Haara and Lahdenranta, “Smithian Sentimentalism Anticipated”; Seidler, “Economising Natural Law”; Zurbuchen, “Dignity and Equality”, 158–63.
5 On Pufendorf’s deduction of the fundamental principle, see Saastamoinen, “Pufendorf on the Law of Nature and the Law of sociality”. A more Hobbesian interpretation is to be found in Palladini, Samuel Pufendorf Disciple of Hobbes.
6 On this element in Pufendorf’s discussion of the desire for esteem, see Haara, Pufendorf’s Theory of Sociability, 120–36, and Haara and Stuart-Buttle, “Beyond Justice”, 699–723.
7 While Pufendorf finds Hobbes’s account of honour in Leviathan, chapter 10, unacceptable, he points out that in De cive, XV.9, Hobbes had described honour as an opinion of another's power joined with goodness (JNG VIII.4.13). Pufendorf finds this a more agreeable formulation but does not contemplate Hobbes’s position on the issue any further. On the role of honour in Hobbes’s earlier and later works, see Slomp, Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory, 38–40, and Field, Potentia, 28–54, 80–91.
8 We inflict injury on others when we take away or damage things which belong to them with a perfect right (JNG I.7.15).
9 See Saastamoinen, “Liberty and Natural Rights in Pufendorf’s Natural Law Theory”, 239–41.
10 On pirates and robbers as common enemies of all, see also JNG III.6.11 and IV.2.8.
11 Recent studies which attribute such an idea of dignity to Pufendorf include Darwall, “Pufendorf on Morality”, 213–38, Vanda Fiorillo, “Der Andere - „ut aeque homo“”, 11–28; Kato, “The Heuristic Use of the Concept of Dignity”, 237–8.
12 For an interpretation which argues that this view is compatible with Locke’s understanding of natural equality, see Saastamoinen, “Natural Equality and Natural Law in Locke’s Two Treatises”.
13 See, Darwall, “Pufendorf on Morality, Sociability and Moral Powers”, 224; Bacin, “Kant’s Idea of Human Dignity”, 101–2; Kato, “The Heuristic Use of the Concept of Dignity”, 237–8.
14 See, Sensen, Kant on Human Dignity.