Enlightened Libraries: Natural Law Collections and their Role in the Intellectual Infrastructure between Lund, Copenhagen and Northern Germany 1650-1800

Conference of the Natural Law 1625-1850. An International Research Project in collaboration with University of Copenhagen, Saxo Institute.

University of Copenhagen, 9–10 February 2023

Modern natural law was a migratory intellectual culture in which books, circulating manuscripts and libraries played a central role. Natural law works, canonical and those now forgotten, were discussed, translated and adapted in a range of scholarly and popular genres and were accessible in public and, especially, private libraries. Surviving collections, catalogues and individual books with indication of ownership and evidence of use are important sources. In other words, the history of natural law is also book history.

In Northern Europe the University of Lund has a central role in this history because Samuel Pufendorf taught and published his two main works on natural law in Lund. And although his tenure was short, his prominence ensured the lasting significance of natural law in Sweden. In Denmark the new ideas were taken up in earnest around 1700, and from then on there was an important and influential circle of natural law inspired intellectuals in Copenhagen.

As elsewhere, natural law in these two neighbouring institutions should be the subject of both institutional history and book history. The aim of the workshop is to initiate a systematic survey of the development of natural law in Copenhagen and Lund as it manifested itself in the books and collections both inside and, especially, alongside the institutional framework. It was typically in professors’ private–but often liberally accessible–libraries that young men encountered the new natural law that was dominated by German ideas. Closer investigation of the libraries offers new perspectives on their owners and their users.

Accordingly, the workshop gathers scholars working on Danish, Swedish and key German collections with significant natural law material. In addition, in order to open up for comparative perspectives on this European phenomenon, there is a presentation of corresponding Spanish collections. And comparison again leads to a general consideration of collections as historical sources.

Support: The workshop has been generously supported by Einar Hansens Forskningsfond and by the Saxo Institute at the University of Copenhagen

Organisation: Knud Haakonssen, Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen, Mads Langballe Jensen and Kristoffer Schmidt

Participation: The workshop is open for anyone interested. For practical reasons we request that you notify one of us if you want to participate:
Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen (olden@hum.ku.dk)
Knud Haakonssen (haakonssen@hum.ku.dk)

Venue: University of Copenhagen, South Campus (Amager Campus), Njalsgade 76, Room 4A.1.13 (in building 4A, to the left of the entrance Njalsgade 76, on the first floor)

Programme

Natural Law at the Universities of Halle, Greifswald, Rostock, Kiel and Copenhagen. Projects coordinated by the International Network on "Natural Law 1625-1850"

Workshop at Interdisziplinäre Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung (IZEA), Halle

17. Januar 2023, 16-18 Uhr

Ort der Veranstaltung: Christian-Thomasius-Zimmer des IZEA, Franckeplatz 1, Haus 54

Das vom Interdisziplinären Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung der Universität Halle und vom Max-Weber-Kolleg der Universität Erfurt institutionell getragene Forschungsnetzwerk Natural Law 1625-1850. An international Research Project hat schon vor einiger Zeit seine Arbeit aufgenommen. Es arbeitet als ein Verbund von ca. 70 Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern aus insgesamt 19 Ländern an der genaueren Aufarbeitung der überwiegend europäischen und eng miteinander vernetzten Naturrechtsdiskussion. Das moderne Naturrecht stellte während des 17., des 18. und bis hinein in das frühe 19.  Jahrhundert das geläufigste „Idiom“ des moralischen und politischen Denkens dar, mit dessen Hilfe Erkenntnisse auf grundlegenden Gebieten der Philosophie, der Jurisprudenz und der erst später sich formierenden sozialen Wissenschaften hervorgebracht und formuliert wurden. Sein theoretischer wie praktischer Stellenwert führte zu seiner allgemeinen, politisch für erforderlich gehaltenen und daher gewollten Verbreitung: Naturrecht wurde zu einem praktisch an allen Universitäten und Hohen Schulen gelehrten Unterrichtsfach, das anthropologische, politische, normative und selbst erkenntnistheoretische Grundlagen vermittelte und so weitere theoretische wie praktische Innovationen initiierte.

Durch die Bewilligung von drei einzelnen, allerdings in enger Verzahnung miteinander kooperierenden DFG-Projekten wird die bisherige Arbeit des Netzwerkes auf eine neue Grundlage gestellt. Die drei Projekte, die von Dr. Martin Kühnel (Halle), Dr. Mads Langballe Jensen (Halle) und Dr. Mikkel Munthe Jensen (Gotha/Erfurt) betrieben werden, betreffen die Naturrechtslehren an den Universitäten Halle, sowie Greifswald, Rostock und Kiel und schließlich das Naturrecht an der Universität Kopenhagen. Die Projektleiter haben ihre Arbeit bereits aufgenommen und werden die methodischen Grundlagen, das Material und erste Ergebnisse ihrer Forschungen am 17.1.2023 im Christian-Thomasius-Zimmer des IZEA mit einem kleinen Kolloquium vorstellen.

Programm

16.00 – 16.15            

Frank Grunert: Begrüßung – Einführung

16:15 - 16:45            

Knud Haakonssen: Some background to the Network on early-modern natural law

16.45 – 17.15            

Martin Kühnel: Die Lehre und Formierung des Naturrechts an der Universität Halle. Die erste Phase 1694-1740  / The Teaching and Formation of Natural Law at the University of Halle. The First Period 1694-1740

17.15 – 17.30            

– Coffeebreak –

17.30 – 18.00           

Mikkel Munthe Jensen: Institutionalising the law of nature and nations: The universities of Kiel, Greifswald and Rostock 1648–1806

18.00 – 18.30             

Mads Langballe Jensen: Academic Natural Law in Absolutist Denmark c. 1690-1773: Professionalisation and Politics

Poster

Naturrecht und Eigentum: Politische Anthropologie im Kontext des Kolonialismus

Tagung des Teilprojekts A03 des SFB TRR 294 „Strukturwandel des Eigentums“ und des Forschungsnetzwerks „Natural Law 1625-1850“ 

Forschungszentrum Gotha, 8. April 2022
Organisation: Martin Mulsow

Eigentum nimmt in der politischen Anthropologie des 17., 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts eine vielfältige und sich ständig wandelnde, aber immer zentrale Position ein. Spielt schon zu Beginn bei Grotius der Kontext der präkolonialen europäischen Expansion über die Weltmeere eine Rolle, so gilt dies um so mehr für die Verschränkung von Naturechts- und Zivilisationstheorien der Aufklärungszeit, und vollends für die Anfänge der Rechtsanthropologie und der Völkerpsychologie im 19. Jahrhundert, als der Kolonialismus seinen Höhepunkt erreichte. Zu fragen ist nach den Funktionen der jeweiligen Eigentums-Konzeptionen, nach Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten der Thematisierung und nach ideologischen Belastungen kolonialer Denkweisen.

Programm (download)
9.00 Stefanie Ertz (Erfurt/Gotha): Eigentumsanthropologien und die Reichweiten des naturrechtlichen Vertragsgedankens: Grotius und Selden

10.00 Dirk Schuck (Erfurt): Self-Posession in John Locke, the Levellers, St. John de Crevecoeur and Mary Wollstonecraft. The Pursuit of an Early Modern Personality Metaphor (Diskutant: Dirk Brantl)

11.00-11.30 Kaffeepause

11.30 Adriana Luna-Fabritius (Helsinki): Labour as a Form of Property in the Political Economy of Antonio Genovesi

12.30-13.30 Mittagspause

13.30 Mikkel Jensen (Erfurt/Gotha): Jens Kraft’s Political Anthropology

14.30 Mads Jensen (Kopenhagen): Property Rights in Slaves Brought from the West Indian Colonies to Denmark around 1800

15.30 Martin Mulsow (Erfurt/Gotha): Vom Naturrecht zur Politischen Psychologie: Wandlungen der Thematisierung von Eigentum im 19. Jahrhundert

16.30-17.00 Kaffepause

17.00 Anna Möllers (Erfurt): Herbert Spencer zu Eigentum, Anthropologie und Naturrecht

18.00 Max Huschke (Jena): Hegels Vergeistigung des Naturrechts im Begriff einer ›zweiten Natur‹. Rechtfertigung und Kritik des Kolonialismus
 

Registration: The meeting is free and open for all interested, but we ask you to register by e-mail to Dr. Mikkel Munthe Jensen: mikkel.jensen@uni-erfurt.de

Early Modern Natural Law around the Baltic Sea: Teaching and Use

Conference of the Network on Natural Law 1625-1850
in Collaboration with the University of Tartu and the Research Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law (Forschungszentrum Gotha & Max-Weber-Kolleg)

University of Tartu, Estonia, 2–3 September 2021

The aim of the conference is to take a comparative look at the teaching and use of natural law around the Baltic Sea in the early modern period. The region was at that time dominated by two Protestant monarchies, Sweden and Denmark-Norway, which also exercised control over a number of territories on the eastern and southern coasts of the Sea. With its strong links to German and Dutch academic culture, the region stood at the forefront of the formation of natural law as an academic discipline: in Uppsala, natural law was taught on the basis of Grotius as early as in 1655, and Samuel Pufendorf published his most influential works as a professor at the University of Lund in the 1670s. In the Danish Knights’ Academy in Sorø Grotius and Selden were taught between the 1630s and 50s, Pufendorf, Thomasius et al. at the similar academy in Copenhagen and at the University from 1690 onwards. Ius naturae et gentium was also taught at the University of Kiel (Schleswig-Holstein, in union with Denmark) from its foundation in 1665, and it also proliferated in the Swedish provincial universities of Dorpat (Livonia), Åbo (Finland) and Greifswald (Pomerania). As in other European countries, the use of natural law in the region was not restricted to academic teaching and theoretical discussion but became also an intellectual resource for conceptualizing and legitimating political developments, and informing legal, political and social reforms.

Rather than focusing on close textual analysis of particular theoretical works, we look at the uses of natural law in these academic and pragmatic contexts. In particular, we explore:

• Factors that influenced the introduction (or disappearance) of natural law as a dominant academic discipline, language or culture, and its position in relation to other traditions, in specific national or regional contexts
• The reception and adaptation of both well- and less-known natural law authors and works (Grotius, Pufendorf, Thomasius, Wolff, Rachel, Burlamaqui, etc.) in the academic environment, either at a particular university, or comparatively in a broader national or regional context
• The theoretical foci of natural law lectures, disputations, textbooks, etc., and their relationship with various pragmatic contexts of the period
• The practical and polemical use of natural law in the efforts of legitimation outside academia, both domestically and internationally (e.g., the questions of absolutism, political, social and religious reform and “improvement”, colonialism, serfdom, protection of individual rights, etc).

Participation is free and open to all interested, but it is necessary to register with Pärtel Piirimäe (partel.piirimae@ut.ee )
 

The conference is organized by the Chair in Intellectual History, University of Tartu (Prof. Pärtel Piirimäe), in conjunction with the international research project “Natural Law 1625-1850” (Halle/Erfurt, directors Knud Haakonssen, Frank Grunert and Louis Pahlow).

Programme

Workshop: Digital Prosopography: The Case of Natural Law

Workshop of the Network on Natural Law 1625-1850
Research Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law (Forschungszentrum Gotha & Max-Weber-Kolleg)

Venue: Forschungszentrum Gotha
Date: 2-3 November 2020

Organisers: Frank Grunert, Mikkel Munthe Jensen, Knud Haakonssen

Registration: The meeting is free and open for all interested, but we ask you to register by e-mail to Dr. Mikkel Munthe Jensen: mikkel.jensen@uni-erfurt.de

Programme

Workshop: Academic Natural Law: Halle, Kiel, Copenhagen. Workshop on current Projects

Workshop des International Network "Natural Law 1625-1850"
in Zusammenarbeit mit IZEA, Halle und der Forschungsstelle Frühneuzeitliches Naturrecht am Max-Weber-Kolleg der Universität Erfurt
und dem Forschungszentrum Gotha.

Organisation und wissenschaftliche Leitung: Prof. Dr. Dr. Knud Haakonssen (Erfurt/ St Andrews) und Dr. Frank Grunert

26. Februar 2020, 09:15 - 17:15 Uhr
IZEA, Franckeplatz 1, Hs. 54, Christian-Thomasius-Zimmer

Das vom Max-Weber-Kolleg der Universität Erfurt und vom IZEA getragene europäische Forschungsnetzwerk Natural Law 1625-1850. An International Research Project hat sich u.a. die Aufgabe gestellt, die akademischen Traditionen des Naturrechts europaweit in einzelnen maßgeblichen Bildungseinrichtungen quellennah aufzuarbeiten, und zwar mit Blick auf die Inhalte, die institutionellen Voraussetzungen und die kulturellen wie politischen Wirkungen.

Dazu wurden und werden einzelne Projekte an verschiedenen europäischen Universitäten betrieben und weitere Vorhaben vorbereitet. Der Workshop “Academic Natural Law: Halle, Kiel, Copenhagen” ist als “Workshop on current Projects” geplant und soll die Gelegenheit bieten, neben ersten Befunden vor allem die weiteren Perspektiven einzelner Forschungsvorhaben zu diskutieren. Im Zentrum stehen dabei drei Universitäten, die bei der Formierung des nach-grotianischen Naturrechts in einer engen Beziehung standen. Ergänzt werden die Beiträge durch Referate zum Naturrecht an der schwedischen Universität in Tartu und zum frühneuzeitlichen Naturrecht in Osteuropa.

Programm

Anmeldung bitte an Dr. Mikkel Munthe Jensen: mikkel.jensen@uni-erfurt.de

Workshop: Marginalia at the centre: Contrasting readings of Grotius, De iure Belli ac Pacis

Workshop of the Network on Natural Law 1625-1850
Research Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law (Forschungszentrum Gotha & Max-Weber-Kolleg)

Forschungszentrum Gotha
26. November 2019, 9.30-15.30

The workshop explores the extraordinary variety of uses to which Hugo Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis was put. We do so by case studies of marginal annotations in Grotius’s work by four strikingly different readers. The first is the ultra-orthodox Lutheran professor of theology Ernst Salomo Cyprian (1673-1745), whose copy of Grotius is preserved in the Gotha Forschungsbibliothek where he was librarian for many years. Second is the Mainzer statesman and scholar, Johann Christian von Boineburg (1622-72), who converted to catholicism, and whose extensive library, including Grotius’s work, is in the Universitätsbibliothek Erfurt. Third is the Hallenser pietist Carl Hildebrand von Canstein (1667-1719), founder of the Cansteinsche Bibelanstalt, whose Grotius is in the Bibliothek der Franckeschen Stiftungen. Finally, we consider a copy of De iure belli in the British Library whose anonymous marginalia appear to have close links to the teaching of the jurist Johann Jacob Vitriarius (1679-1745) in Leiden in the 1730s.

Venue: Forschungszentrum Gotha der Universität Erfurt, Schloßberg 2, 99867 Gotha

Programme organisers: Martin Mulsow, Frank Grunert, Knud Haakonssen

Registration: The meeting is free and open for all interested, but we ask you to register by e-mail to Dr. Mikkel Munthe Jensen: mikkel.jensen@uni-erfurt.de

Programme

Network Conference 2019:
Early-Modern Natural Law in Eastern Europe

Conference of the Network on Natural Law 1625-1850
Research Centre for Early-Modern Natural Law

Max Weber Centre, Erfurt
21-23 November 2019

In 2019, the Network’s conference is being organised by Gábor Gángó and Knud Haakonssen. The theme is the reception of natural law during the early-modern period in the political cultures to the east of the German Empire. In keeping with the programme of the Network, the conference is inter-disciplinary in its approach and is mainly, but not exclusively, focussed on academic natural law. Natural law in Eastern Europe has only be explored to a limited degree, and the conference will open up for new research by  papers devoted to natural law teaching in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vilnius, Elbląg, Toruń, Prague, Vienna, Tyrnau (Trnava), Sárospatak and Klausenburg (Cluj-Napoca). The particular character of natural law discussions in the different religious and political contexts of Eastern Europe will be highlighted, as indicated by the titles in the programme.

Venue: Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Steinplatz 2, Erfurt.

Registration: The meeting is free and open for all interested, but we ask you to register by e-mail to Dr. Mikkel Munthe Jensen: Mikkel.Jensen@uni-erfurt.de

Programme

Network Conference 2018: After Pufendorf: Natural law and the passions in Germany and Scotland

Natural Law 1625-1850: An International Research Project
Conference in St. Andrews, Scotland, 24–27 October 2018
‘After Pufendorf: Natural law and the passions in Germany and Scotland’

Supported by St. Andrews Institute of Intellectual History, Scottish Philosophical Association and Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies (Halle)

By the middle of the eighteenth century, a number of authors who taught and wrote about natural law saw themselves as being engaged in a very different intellectual and academic activity than that of the natural lawyers of earlier generations. While staying within the mode of natural law, the deep-going revision that they understood themselves to be undertaking – each in their separate way – was to shift the idea of natural law as something that human nature needed somehow to have imposed upon it to the idea of natural law as in some sense inherent in human nature itself. Furthermore, they saw the relevant aspects of human nature to be the emotions or passions that drove people in their active lives. This development in natural law thinking has been referred to as an anthropological approach, as a turn from law to moral philosophy, as the formulation of a ‘Recht des Gefühls’, as a sentimental natural law, etc.

It was a line of argument that took several different forms and was articulated in quite different contexts, yet it is recognizable in thinkers as different as Johann Jacob Schmauss in Göttingen and Adam Smith in Glasgow. It was, however, a development that had started much earlier as part of the intense debates at the turn of the century about the nature and validity of Samuel Pufendorf’s natural law. Philosophers, legal theorists and theologians associated with the new university in Halle were the leading disputants, and a particularly important turning point in the debates about Pufendorf was Christian Thomasius’ abnegation during the early years of the new century of the deeply Pufendorfian ideas of natural law that he had been propagating with great impact previously.

Only a few years later, we see a reaction against Pufendorf in Scotland that has a number of strikingly similar features to that in Germany. Here the leading figure was Francis Hutcheson who had a broad influence on the intellectual culture that we now refer to as the Scottish Enlightenment and among whose students was Adam Smith. Across deep differences in philosophical, theological, legal and political contexts in Germany and Scotland the similarities in thoughts about natural law are striking, not only because of the idea of the passionate foundations for natural law, but also because these ideas in both cultural spheres led to some of the sharpest formulations of rights theories and to a historicisation of morality and law that pointed towards the dissolution of the natural law language. While acknowledging the many differences between the German and the Scottish thinkers, similarites such as these are so intriguing that they warrant joint consideration in a conference.

For further details, please contact either Frank Grunert (frank.grunert@izea.uni-halle.de) or Knud Haakonssen (k.haakonssen@gmail.com).

Programme

Workshop: Dr. Marco Barducci (Perugia): Grotius and the English Enlightenment. Questions and Perspektives.

Round-table-Gespräch in Kooperation mit dem Interdisziplinären Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung der Universität Halle-Wittenberg. 
27. Juli 2018, 10:00 Uhr IZEA, Christian-Thomasius-Zimmer

Workshop: Natural Law in Eastern Europe

A workshop in the network ‘Natural Law, 1625-1850’
Forschungsstelle für Frühneuzeitliches Naturrecht
Max-Weber-Kolleg, Erfurt
24.01.2018

11.00-11.30: Knud Haakonssen (Erfurt/St. Andrews)
Welcome and introduction

11.30-12.30: Péter Balázs (Szeged)
‘Pufendorf in Hungarian and Transylvanian Collections’

14.00-15.00: Gábor Gángó (Erfurt/Budapest)
‘Pufendorf's reception in the academic gymnasia of Toruń and Elbląg under Ernest König's directorship’

15.00-16.00: Ivo Cerman (České Budějovice)
‘The Chairs of natural law in Vienna and Prague’

16.15.-17.15: Martin Mulsow (Erfurt/Gotha), Chair
Round-table on future work on natural law in Eastern Europe

The meeting will be held in Room 805 on the 7^th floor of the Max-Weber-Kolleg, Steinplatz 2, 99085 Erfurt (https://www.uni-erfurt.de/max-weber-kolleg/). For further information, please contact either Gábor Gángó (gabor.gango@uni-erfurt.de) or Knud Haakonssen (knud.haakonssen@uni-erfurt.de).

Workshop: Heumanns »Collegium Juris naturae«.
Zugänge zu einem noch unbekannten Manuskript.
Forschungszentrum Gotha
Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha
8. November 2017

Programm
13.30-14.15    Martin Mulsow: Einleitung: Vom Nutzen des Naturrechts und seinen litterärischen
                        Hilfsmitteln (= Prolegomena und Appendix).
14.15-15.00    Knud Haakonssen: Das Recht allgemein. (= Cap. I.)
15.00-15.30    - Kaffeepause-
15.30-16.15    Frank Grunert: Gewissen, Willen, moralisches Handeln. (= Cap. II. u. III.)
16.15-17.00    Gideon Stiening: Honestum – Decorum – Iustum: Von den Prinzipien des Naturrechts.
                        (= Cap. IV.)
17.00-17.30    - Kaffeepause-
17.30-18.15    Holger Glinka: Pflichten gegen Gott, sich selbst und andere. (= Cap. V., VI., VII.)
18.15-19.00    Oliver Bach: Nutzen und Rechte des Staates. (Cap. XI)
19.30              - Abendessen-

Network conference 2016:
Love as the principle of natural law. The natural law of Johann Gottlieb Heineccius and its context

24 - 26 November 2016, Christian-Wolff-Haus, Halle (Saale)

Organisers: Frank Grunert & Knud Haakonssen

Programme

See also: rechtsgeschiedenis.wordpress.com/tag/legal-philosophy/

Network Conference 2015:
The Law of Nations and Natural Law 1625-1850

5-6 November 2015, University of Lausanne

Organisers: Simone Zurbuchen & Lisa Broussois

Programme

Network Conference 2013:
Natural Law as an academic subject 1625-1850

9 to 12 October 2013, IZEA and Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

Organisers: Heiner Lück, Frank Grunert & Dominik Recknagel

Programme