Conference: Wolffian natural law: A contested identity?

International conference of the Natural Law 1625-1850. An International Research Project in collaboration with Max Weber Kolleg, University of Erfurt, and Interdisziplinäre Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung, University of Halle-Wittenberg,

Venue: MWK, University of Erfurt
Time: 5.3-6.3. 2025
Organisers: Mads Langballe Jensen, Martin Kühnel, Mikkel Munthe Jensen
Funding: DFG and Fritz Wiedemann-Stiftung

“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).

Programme 

Poster

[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.

Natural Law and Enlightenment Universities in East-Central Europe

Prague, 19-20 September 2024, Academy of Sciences, Národní 1009/3, 110 00 Praha 1

Organisation: Ivo Cerman (University of South Bohemia), Jan Květina (History Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences)

Accommodation: Novoměstský hotel, Řeznická 1890/4, 11000 Praha 1

Lunch: U Medvídků, Na Perštýně 7, 100 01 Praha 1

The Outline:

Following up on the workshop on Eastern Europe that the Network organised in 2019 in Erfurt, the  present conference will focus on the era of Enlightenment reforms in the 18^th century. It was during this era that the reforming monarchies and the Rzeczpospolita institutionalized natural law at universities and then utilized this discipline in a wide range of legislative measures. Also in East-Central Europe, we can observe this process from an academic discipline to practical legislation. As Knud Haakonssen recently put it:  ‘In sum, early modern natural law was first of all an academic discipline institutionalized for political reasons to discharge social, juridical and political functions.’ (Knud Haakonssen, Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence, p. 79). The workshop will focus on the institutionalization of natural law and related disciplines at institutions of higher education in East-Central Europe; it will explore the role of natural law in the drafting of the first systematic legal codes; and finally it will analyse the way natural law arguments were used in the discourse justifying the Enlightenment reforms. We will concentrate on the Habsburg monarchy, the Rzeczpospolita and the present-day Ukraine.

Thursday 19 September

Opening

Ivo Cerman – Jan Květina, Welcome Address

I General lectures

Daniel Kroupa (J. E. Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem), On the role of natural law in restoring the Czech Charter of Fundamental Rights and Liberties in 1991

Knud Haakonssen (Copenhagen/St Andrews), The Study of Natural Law: History or Philosophy?

     - (Discussion) (Break) -

II Reforms of Higher Education: the institutionalization of natural law

Paweł Fiktus (University of Law in Wrocław) and and Marta Baranowska (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), Between the Universalism of the Laws of Nature and the Particular National Culture. Hugo Kołłątaj’s Reform of the University of Cracow

Gábor Gángó (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt), Catholic Natural Law in Poland, with Focus on Feliks Słotwinski

     - (Discussion)(Lunch) -

Volodymyr Kyrychenko (Kharkiv National University of Internal Affairs), Opposition of Tsarism to the Spread of Ideas of Natural Law in the Universities of the Empire at the Beginning of the 19th Century

Volodymyr Kakhnych (Faculty of Law, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv), Natural Law at the University of Lviv

     - (Discussion) -

Ivo Cerman (Faculty of Arts, University of South Bohemia), Were Human Rights in Martini´s Natural Law Real?

Erika Juríková (Faculty of Pedagogy, University of Trnava), The Introduction of Natural Law at the University of Trnava and its Latin Terminology

     - (Discussion)(Break) -

Ivana Horbec (Croatian Institute of History): Nikola Škrlec Lomnički and the Political and Cameral Science at Colleges in Habsburg Croatia

Petrasovszky Anna Maria (Faculty of Law, University of Miskolc): Metamorphosis of Legal Philosophy: The Evolution of Natural Law Conception in 19th Century Hungary

     - (Discussion) -

Friday 20 September

III Western Influences

Thérence Carvalho (Faculté de droits et des sciences politiques de l´Université de Nantes), The Teaching of Physiocracy in Poland-Lithuania: Between the Renewal of Natural Law and the Encouragement of Enlightened Reforms

Volodymyr O. Abaschnik, (Kharkiv National Medical University), Johann Baptist Schad´s "Institutiones juris naturae", Charkoviae, 1814

Frank Grunert (Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung, Universität Halle), Natural Law and its Application. Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob (1759-1827) in Kharkiv and St Petersburg

     - (Discussion)(Break) -

IV The Impact on Systematic Codifications:

Ondřej Horák (Faculty of Law, University of Olomouc), Natural Law and the Codification of Civil Law in the Habsburg Monarchy

Christian Neschwara (Rechtswissenschaftliche Fakultät, Universität Wien), Natural Law and the Codification of Criminal Law in the Habsburg Monarchy

     - (Lunch) -

Eszter Cs. Herger (Faculty of Law, University of Pecs), The Influence of Natural Law on the Teaching of Family Law in Hungary

Paweł Fiktus (University of Law in Wrocław) and Marta Baranowska (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń), Codification of Law in the 18th Century in Poland on the Example of Andrzej Zamoyski's Code

     - (Discussion) -

IV Justifying Enlightenment Reforms

Olena Sokalska (Scientific-Research Institute of the Criminal-Executive Service and Probation, Kyiv Ukraine), The Influence of Natural Law on the Cossack Tradition of Early Modern Constitutionalism

Adam Perlakowski (Faculty of History, Jagiellonski University of Cracow), Golden Liberty as a Natural Law in the Polish Political Thought

Jan Květina (History Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences), Instrumentalization of Polish-Lithuanian Early Modern Republicans in the Discourse of the Enlightenment: The Case of Modrzewski

     - (Discussion) -

Jean Barbeyrac

International Workshop, University of Lausanne

Time: July 4-5, 2024
Venue: University of Lausanne, building “Anthropole”, Room 5021, metro station (M1) “UNIL-Chamberonne”: https://www.unil.ch/acces/home.html
Organisation: Béla Kapossy, Simone Zurbuchen
Support: Swiss National Science Foundation, University of Lausanne

Thursday, July 4

Session 1: Life and Work, Networks and Correspondence
Chair: Simone Zurbuchen
09h00 – 09h15            Welcome

09h15 – 10h00           Béla Kapossy (University of Lausanne): Barbeyrac and the Swiss Enlightenment

10h00 – 10h45           Ann Thomson (European University Institute): Barbeyrac as part of Des Maizeaux’s intellectual and publishing network

            - Coffee break -

11h15 – 12h00            Kristoffer Schmidt (Copenhagen): Barbeyrac’s Library

Session 2: Natural Law and the Law of Nations
Chair: Mads Langballe Jensen
12h00 – 12h45           Knud Haakonssen (University of Copenhagen/University of St. Andrews): The core of Barbeyrac’s criticism of Pufendorf

            - Lunch break -

14h15 – 15h00           Edward Jones Corredera (University of Cambridge): Barbeyrac’s vision of debt: between political economy and the law of nations

15h00 – 15h45           Gabriella Silvestrini (Università del Piemonte orientale): Barbeyrac and Rousseau

            - Coffee break -

16h00 – 16h45           Frank Grunert (IZEA, Halle): “Not just working”. Games as a social model in Barbeyrac’s Traité du jeu

Friday, July 5

Session 3: Political, Religious, and Philosophical Controversies
Chair: Béla Kapossy
09h15 – 10h00           Denis Tappy (University of Lausanne): Les théories de Barbeyrac sur le droit de résistance à l’épreuve des faits en Suisse romande / Barbeyrac’s theories of toleration in the Suisse romande context

10h00 – 10h45           Fiammetta Palladini (Berlin): Jean Barbeyrac et ses adversaires orthodoxes à Berlin / Jean Barbeyrac and his orthodox opponents in Berlin

            - Coffee break -

11h15 – 12h00           Simone Zurbuchen (University of Lausanne): Moral obligation: from Barbeyrac to Burlamaqui

12h00 – 12h45           Radek Szymanski (University of Lausanne): Moral obligation: Vattel’s critique of Barbeyrac

Programme

Participation: the workshop is open for anyone interested. For practical reasons please register before June 15, 2024: simone.zurbuchenpittlik@unil.ch

For further information please contact
bela.kapossy@unil.ch or
simone.zurbuchenpittlik@unil.ch

Pufendorf across the Sound – in Teaching and Practice

Conference of the Natural Law 1625-1850. An International Research Project in collaboration with the Faculty of Law, Lund University

Time: 6 – 7 March 2024.
Venue: Rättegångssalen, Lilla Gråbrödersgatan 3 C
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

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.’

—————

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.’

16.00-c. 17.30: Per Stobaeus: Display of Pufendorf holdings in the University Library of Lund.

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.

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

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