Workshop: Early Modern Natural Law. Results of current projects
Workshop of the Natural Law 1625-1850: An International Research Network in cooperation with the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies, University of Halle-Wittenberg and the Forschungsstelle für Frühneuzeitliches Naturrecht, Forschungszentrum Gotha and Max-Weber-Kolleg, University of Erfurt.
Venue: Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Christian-Thomasius-Zimmer.
Time: Thursday 15.10.2026, 9.00–18.30
Organisers: Mads Langballe Jensen, Mikkel Munthe Jensen, Martin Kühnel
Funding: German Research Council (DFG)
A number of DFG-funded research projects devoted to early modern natural law are currently based at the Gotha Research Centre (University of Erfurt) and the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg). These projects approach the subject from different perspectives and focus on distinct configurations of natural-law discourse. While the projects based in Halle examine the formation and development of academic natural law at a range of Northern European universities, those pursued in Gotha investigate the reception and influence of individual theories as well as networks of debate centred on particular historical actors.
The workshop brings together the various projects to present and discuss both preliminary findings and final results. In doing so, it seeks to explore connections between their respective approaches and findings and to identify perspectives for further research.
Preliminary Programme:
09.00 – 09.15: Mads Langballe Jensen, Mikkel Munthe Jensen, Martin Kühnel
Welcome, opening, short introduction
09.15 – 10.15 Martin Kühnel
Naturrecht an der Universität Halle 1690–1740. Eine akademische Disziplin in der Vielfalt ihrer Lehre – Zum Abschluss eines Forschungsprojekts
10.15 – 11.15 Mikkel Munthe Jensen
Institutionalising Natural Law at the Universities of Kiel, Greifswald and Rostock, 1648–1806: Preliminary Results on the Teaching of the Law of Nature at Rostock, ca. 1690–1720
11.15 – 11.30
– Coffee break –
11.30 – 12.30 Mads Langballe Jensen
Putting Wolffianism in its Place. The Case of Denmark 1750-1773
12.30 – 14.00
– Lunch –
14.00 – 15.00 Stefanie Ertz
Die Geburt des Rechtsuniversalismus aus dem reformierten Völkerrecht. Das Naturrecht von Heinrich und Samuel Cocceji und seine Rezeption in der europäischen Aufklärung – Ein Projektbericht
15.00 – 16.00 Gábor Gángó
Gisbertus Voetius and the Boineburg Circle
16.00 – 16.15
– Coffee break –
16.15 – 17.15 Frank Grunert
Love and Law. New Research on the Natural Law Theory of Johann Gottlieb Heineccius
17.15 – 18.00
Rounding-off session – Further Perspectives
International Conference: Natural Law in Action, 1625-1770
International conference of the Natural Law 1625-1850: An International Research Network in collaboration with Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies, University of Halle-Wittenberg and University of Rostock
Venue: Konzil- und Professorenzimmer, Universität Rostock, Hauptgebäude, Universitätsplatz 1, 18055 Rostock
Time: 9-10 September 2027
Organisers: Mikkel Munthe Jensen, Mads Langballe Jensen, Martin Kühnel, Hillard von Thiessen
Funding: German Research Council (DFG)
Keynote: Andrew Fitzmaurice, Professor of the History of Political Thought, Queen Mary University of London
Modern natural law is commonly understood as a driving force behind major innovations in moral philosophy, politics, and law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Consequently, a vast scholarship has examined natural law as a doctrine in the form of systematic theories based on academic works, textbooks, dissertations, and university teaching. The law of nature and nations was of historical significance, however, not least due to its practical importance as a tool for generations of learned educators and advisors, professional lawyers and civil servants, absolute rulers, and enlightened reformers. Natural law was wielded for various purposes and in different genres, ranging from legal opinions and proceedings over the justification of war and the negotiation of peace, as well as to the legitimation of political and ecclesiastical reforms.
This conference therefore shifts the perspective first by investigating the role of the professional natural lawyer in practical matters and second in asking how natural jurisprudence was used to achieve concrete political or legal change. By focusing on application rather than theory, the aim of the conference is to trace natural law where it did practical work in the years from 1625 to 1770. For example:
- Constitutional and political reforms
- Adjudicatory practice (such as Spruchtätigkeit) and legal proceedings
- Public polemics, for instance pamphlets, journals, and public controversies
- Religious debates and ecclesiastical reform
- Diplomacy, justification of war and negotiations of peace
- Colonial and imperial contestation, including by non-European actors
- The roles and professional personae of those putting natural law in action, such as advisor and polemicists
- The genres through which natural law was put in action
By examining these and other topics, the conference will show how the practical uses of natural law shaped a wide array of practical life (politics, law, commerce, religion), thereby uncovering the practices, rhetorical strategies, and institutional settings through which natural law acquired its contemporary and historical significance.
Programme: TBA
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