Naturrecht, Politik und Reform der Gesellschaft: Johann Christian von Boineburg
Workshop der Forschungsstelle für frühneuzeitliches Naturrecht
Forschungszentrum Gotha, 30. November - 1. Dezember 2023
Organisiert von Martin Mulsow und Gábor Gángó
In den vergangenen Jahren ist Bewegung in die Erforschung der intellektuellen Wirkungskraft von Johann Christian Boineburg (1622-1672) gekommen. Seine politischen Aktivitäten zusammen mit Leibniz, seine Bedeutung für Pufendorfs Entwicklung, seine dominierende Rolle in der Bemühung um eine Christianisierung des Naturrechts, die Steuerung der Grotius-Rezeption, seine Involvierung in den Synkretismusstreit um Georg Calixt, seine geplanten Schriften zur politischen Rolle von Irrtümern - all dies ist inzwischen deutlicher herausgearbeitet, so dass Boineburg als ein zentraler „Broker“ in der Dynamik der politischen Ideengeschichte des 17. Jahrhunderts Kontur gewinnt.
Doch vieles ist immer noch zu entdecken. Da Boineburg selbst kaum etwas publiziert hat, sind die Hauptquellen für die Rekonstruktion seines Denkens und seiner Wirkung zum einen seine umfangreiche Korrespondenz und zum anderen die Annotationen in den Büchern, die ihm wichtig waren. Beides birgt noch immense unerschlossene Potentiale. Der Workshop will versuchen, erste Schneisen in das unbekannte Gebiet zu schlagen: über die exemplarische Analyse ausgewählter Briefwechsel und einzelner annotierter Exemplare.
Die philologisch-historischen Vorarbeiten sowohl zur Privatbibliothek Boineburgs als auch zur Erschließung seiner politischen und Gelehrtenkorrespondenz ermöglichen, ideen- und kulturgeschichtliche Fragestellungen auf einer besonders breiten Quellenbasis zu formulieren. Der Umfang der handschriftlichen Quellen und die Vielschichtigkeit der Aktivität von Boineburg ruft dabei zu einer interdisziplinären Zusammenarbeit von Experten und Expertinnen der frühneuzeitlichen Gelehrtenrepublik auf.
Vorarbeiten:
Gábor Gángó: Der Wahlkampf des Pfalzgrafen Philipp Wilhelm von Neuburg um die polnische Krone und die Entstehung von Leibniz’ Specimen Polonorum‘, in: Irene Dingel, Michael Kempe, Wenchao Li (Hg.): Leibniz in Mainz. Europäische Dimensionen der Mainzer Wirkungsperiode, Göttingen 2019, 45–71.
Ders.: Johann Christian von Boineburg, Samuel Pufendorf, and the foundation myth of modern natural law, in: History of European Ideas 49 (2023/3), 523–542.
Ders.: Christian natural law and the reception of Grotius in the intellectual circles of Johann Christian von Boineburg’, in: Natural Law, Religious Conflict, and the problem of war and peace in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, International Workshop, Research Centre for Polish-Lithuanian studies, University of Aberdeen, 30 September – 1 October 2022.
Ders.: The Correspondence of Johann Christian von Boineburg, in: Early Modern Letters Online [EMLO], ed. H. Hotson/M. Lewis, http://emlo-portal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections/?catalogue=johann-christian-von-boineburg [2021].
Martin Mulsow: Unter dem Eindruck des Dreißigjährigen Krieges entwarf der Diplomat Johann Christian von Boineburg ein Buch über den Nutzen der Irrtümer, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung vom 28.12.2022, S. N3.
Kathrin Paasch: Die Bibliothek des Johann Christian von Boineburg (1622–1672). Ein Beitrag zur Bibliothekgeschichte des Polyhistorismus, Berlin 2005.
Programme:
Donnerstag, 30. November
13.00 Begrüßung und Einführung
13.30 Martin Mulsow (Erfurt/Gotha): Boineburgs annotierte Exemplare von Gabriel Naudés Schriften
14.30 József Simon (Szeged): Boineburg und Georg Calixt
15.30 Kaffeepause
16.00 Michael Kempe (Hannover): Das „Dreieck“ Boineburg, Johann Friedrich und Leibniz
17.00 Mikkel Munthe Jensen (Gotha): Boineburg und Samuel Rachel
19.00 Gemeinsames Abendessen (auf Selbstzahlerbasis)
Freitag, 1. Dezember
9.00 Hannes Amberger (Gotha): Boineburg und Johann Heinrich Boecler
10.00 Stefanie Ertz (Gotha): Boineburg, Conring und ihre Beziehung zu Grotius
11.00 Kaffeepause
11.30 Gábor Gángó (Erfurt/Budapest): Leibniz’ Spuren in der Bibliothek von Johann Christian von Boineburg
Pufendorf across the Sound – in Teaching and Practice
Conference of the Natural Law 1625-1850. An International Research Project in collaboration with Lund University, the Faculty of Law,
Lund University, 6 – 7 March 2024.
Programme
6 March
10-10.15: Welcome
10.15 – 11.00 Kjell Åke Modéer (Lund): ‘Samuel Pufendorf and Lund – a perspective of more than 350 years.’
11.00-11.30: Coffee break
11.30-12.15: Joachim Östlund (Lund): ‘Pufendorf’s teaching and the Swedish path to peace with non-Christian states.’
12.15-13.00: Jonas Nordin (Lund): ‘Pufendorf, Erik Dahlbergh and the history of Charles X Gustavus as propaganda and coffee-table book.’
13.00-14.00: Lunch
14.00-14.45: Sören Koch (Bergen): ‘Pufendorf and Holberg: Different perspectives on Danish-Swedish relations.’
14.45-15.30: Per Nilsén (Lund): ’Twenne böcker om menniskans lefnads och samlefnads plicht. The Swedish translation (1747) of Pufendorf’s De Officio Hominis et Civis.’
15.30-16.00: Coffee
16.00-16.45: Bo Lindberg (Gothenburg): ‘Pufendorf and the fatherland.’
16.45-17.00: Short break
17.00-18.00 Public Lecture: Michael Seidler (Western Kentucky): ‘Pufendorf’s Dissertationes Academicae Selectiores (Lund 1675) – Pufendorf’s last word from Lund.’
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7 March
9.30-10.15: Pernille Ulla Knudsen (Copenhagen): ‘A European masterpiece on rights and duties in Danish garb: the Danish translation of Pufendorf’s De Officio Hominis et Civis (1742).’
10.15-11.00: Knud Haakonssen (Copenhagen/St. Andrews): ‘Pufendorf Translated, Pufendorf Transformed: The Danish Case.’
11.00-11.30: Coffee
11.30-12.15: Mads Langballe Jensen (Lund): ‘Chr. L. Scheidt’s Pufendorf-lectures in Copenhagen 1740-42.’
12.15-13.00: Thor Inge Rørvik (Oslo): ‘The Sound as a Topic in Natural Law (Grotius, Pufendorf, Gunnerus).’
13.00-14.00: Lunch
14.00-14.45: Kristoffer Schmidt (Copenhagen): ‘Pufendorf in Danish book collections and libraries.’
14.45-15.30: Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen (Copenhagen): ‘Pufendorf’s experience with Denmark.’
15.45.17.00: Display of Pufendorf holdings in the University Library of Lund.
Support The workshop has been generously supported by Einar Hansens Forskningsfond and Den Olinska Stiftelsen.
Organisation: Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen, Knud Haakonssen, Per Nilsén, Helle Vogt
Inquiries: about the programme, contact Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen (olden@hum.ku.dk) or Knud Haakonssen (k.haakonssen@gmail.com).
About local arrangements, contact Per Nilsén (per.nilsen@jur.lu.se) or Helle Vogt (Helle.Vogt@jur.ku.dk).
Participation: The workshop is open for anyone interested. For practical reasons we request that you notify Helle Vogt if you want to attend.
CFP: Wolffian natural law: A contested identity?
CALL FOR PAPERS
Conference of the Natural Law 1625-1850. An International Research Project in collaboration with Interdisziplinäre Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung, University of Halle-Wittenberg,
Venue: IZEA, MLU Halle-Wittenberg
Time: February 2025
Organisers: Mads Langballe Jensen, Martin Kühnel, Mikkel Munthe Jensen
“Wolffianism” is commonly recognised as the dominant school of philosophy in much of the eighteenth century, and hence as a significant episode in the general history of philosophy. “Wolffianism” was not least a phenomenon in the history of natural law. Christian Wolff produced an extensive body of works on the law of nature and nations in the 1740s and 1750s as part of his philosophical system and intended to replace the works of Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf as the standard literature in the discipline. For the Wolffians themselves, and other contemporary and later observers, Wolff’s works constituted a new and distinct form of natural law.[1]
“Wolffian natural law”, however, predated Christian Wolff’s own works by several decades. The natural law presented in his early German Ethics and German Politics was at best rudimentary, although he did set out a fuller conception of natural law already in his lectures in Marburg. So – as later with Kant – his followers started developing philosophical insights from these and his metaphysical works and applied them in their own works of natural law. Already in 1736, for instance, the decidedly non-Wolffian Danish professor of natural law, Andreas Hojer, listed works of natural law by scholars explicitly identified as “followers of Wolff”, including the Jena professor Heinrich Koehler. Hojer identified the doctrine of moral goodness and obligation independent of the divine as characteristic of Wolff, but he noted also that not all “the doctors or lovers of Wolffian philosophy” subscribe to this.[2]
Neither was Wolff himself perhaps the greatest populariser of Wolffian natural law. Several of his students’ works on natural law seem to have been just as great, or greater, vehicles for the transmission of “Wolffian natural law”, including Wolff’s protégé Ludwig Philipp Thümmig’s Institutiones Philosophiae Wolffianae (1725-1726) and Joachim Georg Darjes’ Observationes iuris naturalis socialis et gentium (1751-1754). Such works informed independent lectures on natural law or became the subject of detailed lectures themselves.
This leads to the key question of what principles and attitudes might be taken to define “Wolffian natural law”: an invocation of Wolff’s works and authority; perfection as the fundamental principle of natural law; a mathematical method and the primacy of the discipline and method of philosophy over other disciplines; the principle of sufficient reason; optimism about the human will and intellect; a distinct idea of the civic or educational role of Wolffianism (also for women); or something else entirely? All or only some of these? Such ideas are open to differing interpretations, and thinkers might adopt one or more of these ideas. But what was significant for natural lawyers in the eighteenth century to see themselves or others as Wolffians? And what is significant for modern scholarship to classify a natural lawyer as “Wolffian”?
Such considerations indicate that also in the domain of natural law, “Wolffianism” in the eighteenth century was a less unitary phenomenon, and that its relationship to other intellectual currents, such as “Pietism” or other, rival forms of natural law was less clear cut.[3]
To what extent, then, can there be said to have been a coherent school of “Wolffian natural law” in the eighteenth century and how was it distinguished from and how did it interact with other “schools” of natural law and the law of nations? Can distinct centres of teaching and modes of propagation be identified? What was the significance of Wolffianism for the disciplinary and institutional history of natural law? This conference invites contributions that address such questions by looking at the teaching of natural law at specific times and locales across eighteenth-century Europe (and beyond).
Please send topic proposals with an abstract (approx. 250 words) by 01.03.2024 to the following email address: mads-langballe.jensen@izea.uni-halle.de
[1] Ompteda, Litteratur des gesammten sowohl natürlichen als positiven Völkerrechts (Regensburg, 1785), I, 320.
[2] Andreas Hojer, Ideae Icti Danici partem 1. (Copenhagen, 1736), 25, footnote C.
[3] Simon Grote, “Wolffianism and Pietism in eighteenth-century German philosophy”, Intellectual History Review 33, nr. 4 (2. October 2023): 673–701.
CFP: GROTIUS-CONFERENCE 2025: Teaching Hugo Grotius. The reception of De Iure Belli ac Pacis in European academia between 1625 and 1850.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Conference of the Natural Law 1625-1850. An International Research Project in collaboration with Interdisziplinäre Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung, University of Halle-Wittenberg,
Venue: IZEA, MLU Halle-Wittenberg
Time: 01.10. – 04.10.2025
Organisers: Knud Haakonssen, Frank Grunert, Laura Beck Varela
There is no doubt that Hugo Grotius’s De Iure Belli ac Pacis, first published in Paris in 1625, is one of the most influential books ever written. By 1645, six editions had already appeared during Grotius' lifetime and the number of editions and translations that were subsequently published worldwide is almost impossible to keep track of. Although the text initially – seven years into the Thirty Years' War – advertised itself as a fundamental work on the law of nations that aimed to define the legal framework of armed conflicts, it was more than that. Already the subtitle announces that it is primarily intended to explain the "Jus Naturae et Gentium" and the "Jus Publicum". In fact De Iure Belli ac Pacis is a general legal doctrine that takes a stance on almost all legal matters of public and private law from the perspective of possible violations. Even after one and a half century’s intensive reception of the work, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel appreciated this: Although the The Rights of War and Peace might "now" no longer be read by anyone, it had "been of the greatest effectiveness", not least due to the fact that Grotius's legal thought had "addressed everything".
Although the surviving evidence of the reception of De Iure Belli ac Pacis, beginning soon after its publication, is extensive and varied, the history of the book's reception is only known in outline. The 400th anniversary of the publication offers a welcome opportunity to reconstruct this history in detail at a conference planned for autumn 2025.
Even at first glance, different phases can be roughly distinguished. Initially – i.e. in the second half of the 17th century – a commentary literature dominated that aimed at factual exposition of the work or at partisan support of a favoured doctrine. But the effect of Samuel Pufendorf was to turn exposition into detailed analysis and partisanship into a steppingstone for the author’s own theory. The renowned teachers of natural law of the late 17th and 18th centuries combined the two. Thomasius, Heineccius and Wolff are only the most prominent examples of creative readings of The Rights of War and Peace and only in the German context.
However, a reconstruction of the historically concrete reception of The Rights of War and Peace cannot be a matter of uncovering traces of Grotian thought in the juridical treatises of his successors. The main focus must be on the media and textual genres typical for the productive reception of De Iure Belli ac Pacis. Since the Grotius discussion – not only, but mainly – took place in academic teaching, or at least was closely connected to it, the corresponding texts and, where possible, their practical usage must be in the foreground: In addition to textbooks and dissertations, these include lecture notes, lecture announcements and lecture catalogues; works that made De Iure Belli ac Pacis teachable and accessible, such as commentaries and tables, including, not least, items that made Grotius's work visible as an object of examination. In other words, the creative adaptations of the work made by translators, editors, lecturers, et al. The surrounding literature is also important for this reception story: journals, encyclopaedias, histories of scholarship and fictional literature (Grotius was also literally staged). Last but not least, the records of how Grotius was used in legal procedures.
A complete review of the dissemination of De Iure Belli ac Pacis is obviously not possible, but a wide-ranging conference with its division of labour and the concrete targets indicated here will make a difference. The organisers invite interested historians of law, philosophy and politics to address aspects of this reception for the period from 1625 to 1850 and in any part of the world by considering the groups of sources mentioned. Contributions should provide information on how exactly De Iure Belli ac Pacis was dealt with: what was particularly appreciated about the work at what time? Which aspects were further developed in the sense of a productive reception and application? What lines of reception can be traced; and when and why did Grotius' De Iure Belli ac Pacis eventually become primarily a subject of historical research?
Contributions are welcome especially in the following areas:
I. Editions and translations of DIBP, demonstrably adapted for teaching
II. Commentaries on DIBP provided for teaching
III. Lectures on Grotius' doctrine of natural law
IV. Dissertations on DIBP
V. Grotius discussions in natural law textbooks
VI. The rendering of Grotius in encyclopaedias and reference works
VII. The Grotian persona, e.g., in poetry
The conference will be organised by the International Research Network Natural 1625-1850 and the Forschungsstelle frühneuzeitliches Naturrecht (Erfurt/Gotha) and will take place in autumn 2025 at the Interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of the European Enlightenment at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg under the direction of Knud Haakonssen, Frank Grunert, and Laura Beck Varela. Travel and accommodation costs for the speakers will be covered by the conference.
Please send topic proposals with an abstract (approx. 250 words) by 01.03.2024 to the following email address: frank.grunert@izea.uni-halle.de
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For previous conferences and workshops, see the Archive
