On the Origin and the Progress of the Science of Natural Law

Translation from Latin into Russian by Andrey A. Sochilin

Abstract

The publication contains the translation of the first chapter of the treatise of the German jurist, philosopher and historian Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694) “Sample of controversies on natural law, which were caused by himself [i.e. by Pufendorf]”. It was published in 1678. This text entitled “On the Origin and the Progress of the Science of Natural Law” is a part of so called “Eris Scandica” (“The Scandinavian Quarrel”) corpus, which was caused by the magnum opus of Pufendorf – “De jure naturae et gentium” (1672). “On the Origin and the Progress” is known as the first text among the so called “histories of morality” – the group of treatises dated from 17th to first half of 18th century, in which the evolution of the modern law theory was described. The model of the history of natural law, which was outlined in the “On the Origin and the Progress”, in fact also served as the model for writing history of the entire European moral philosophy. Here Pufendorf is describing and analyzing prerequisites and sources of the Modern Natural Law, which can be found in Old and New Testament tradition, in Roman Jurisprudence and Ancient Greek Philosophy. He also reviewed briefly the works of Hugo Grotius, John Selden, Thomas Hobbes and Richard Cumberland. All the books and traditions are being considered in the scope of constructing “the system of natural law which is full and accommodated to the comprehension by all mankind”. The text is permeated with the idea of the progress in natural law theory, which is possible to achieve, with insisting on the necessity to keep away from religious and theological quarrels in developing the theory, and also with striving for the consistency, methodological clarity and the elaboration of the broad theoretical grounds of the natural law theory. This text has translated to Russian for the first time.