RIVALENLIGHTENMENTS:Civil and Metaphysical

Philosophy in Early Modern Germany

Cambridge University Press

IAN HUNTER

RIVAL ENLIGHTENMENTS

Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany

Rival Enlightenments is a major reinterpretaton of early modernGerman intellectual history. Ian Hunter approaches philosophicaldoctrines as ways of fashioning personae for envisaged historicalcircumstances, here of confessional conflict and political desacral-isation. He treats the civil philosophy of Pufendorf and Thomasiusand the metaphysical philosophy of Leibniz and Kant as rival intel-lectual cultures or paideia, thereby challenging all histories premisedon Kant’s supposed reconciliation and transcendence of the field.This landmark study reveals for the first time in English the extra-ordinary historical self-consciousness of the civil philosophers, whorepudiated university metaphysics as inimical to the intellectual for-mation of those administering desacralised territorial states. Thebook argues that the marginalisation of civil philosophy in post-Kantian philosophical history may itself be seen as a continuationof the struggle between the rival enlightenments. Combiningcareful and well-documented scholarship with vivid polemic,Hunter presents penetrating insights for philosophers and histori-ans alike.

is Professor of Humanities and Founding Director ofthe Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at GriffithUniversity, Queensland, Australia. He is the author of Culture andGovernment: The Emergence of Literary Education () and Rethinking theSchool (), as well as numerous articles dealing with the historicalconditions and roles of moral and political thought.

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The books in this series will discuss the emergence of intellectual traditions andof related new disciplines. The procedures, aims, and vocabularies that weregenerated will be set in the context of the alternatives available within the con-temporary frameworks of ideas and institutions. Through detailed studies ofthe evolution of such traditions, and their modification by different audiences,it is hoped that a new picture will form of the development of ideas in theirconcrete contexts. By this means, artificial distinctions between the history ofphilosophy, of the various sciences, of society and politics, and of literaturemay be seen to dissolve.

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RIVAL ENLIGHTENMENTSCivil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany

IAN HUNTER

PUBLISHED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (VIRTUAL PUBLISHING) FOR AND ON BEHALF OF THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia http://www.cambridge.org © Ian Hunter 2001 This edition © Ian Hunter 2003 First published in printed format 2001 A catalogue record for the original printed book is available from the British Library and from the Library of Congress Original ISBN 0 521 79265 7 hardback ISBN 0 511 01358 2 virtual (netLibrary Edition)

Contents

Preface page ixAcknowledgements xivList of abbreviations and texts used xviNote on conventions xix

Introduction

University metaphysics . Introduction . Metaphysics as the philosophical subsumption of theology . The return of metaphysics to the Protestant academy . The metaphysical ethos . Political metaphysics

Civil philosophy . Introduction . Reductions of the civil: society and reason . Sources of the civil: politics and law . Civil philosophy and profane natural law

Leibniz’s political metaphysics . Introduction . From Protestant Schulmetaphysik to rationalist metaphysics . The subject of metaphysics . Philosophical theology . The metaphysics of law

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Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy . Introduction . Moral philosophy and political obligation . From moral personality to civil personae . From transcendent reflection to chastened observation . Political subjecthood and civil sovereignty

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics . Introduction . Thomasius and the history of moral philosophy . The attack on metaphysical scholasticism . Detranscendentalising ethics . Natural law . From moral philosophy to political jurisprudence

Afterword: Thomasius, Wolff, and the Pietists

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics . Introduction . The morals of metaphysics . Kant’s metaphysical ethos . Moral philosophy as metaphysical paideia . The metaphysics of law . The pure religion of reason

Postscript: The kingdom of truth and the civil kingdom

List of references Index

viii Contents

Preface

The prime objective of this work is to reinstate a marginalised intellec-tual culture to its proper place in the intellectual history of early modernGermany. Although the civil philosophy of Samuel Pufendorf andChristian Thomasius is not unknown in the modern humanitiesacademy, sympathetic treatment of their work is largely confined to thehistory of political philosophy, jurisprudence, and theology. To theextent that they feature in intellectual history and the history of philos-ophy more broadly, however, they appear as superseded figures, destinedto be absorbed by the great oscillations between rationalism and volun-tarism, idealism and empiricism which would reach their culminatingreconciliation in the epochal philosophy of Immanuel Kant. We shall seethat this reigning dialectical historiography is itself the offshoot of asecond, rival intellectual movement, centred in the culture of universitymetaphysics. In order to recover early modern civil philosophy, there-fore, it has proved necessary to criticise and reject a dialectical historiog-raphy designed to erase its historical existence and political significance.In place of this reconciliatory history, this book offers an account of twoindependent intellectual cultures – the ‘rival enlightenments’ of civil andmetaphysical philosophy – which remain unreconciled today.

Retrieving civil philosophy from the all-assimilating, all-unifying millof dialectical philosophical history is no straightforward task. For, bydrawing its impetus from the arranged mutual deficiencies of opposedviewpoints, this historiography gives shape not just to history but also tothe historian. It treats history as the medium in which the unreconcileddimensions of human subjectivity move towards their harmonisation, inthe final recovery of the a priori conditions of experience and morality– the moment of Kant’s critical philosophy. Under these intellectual con-ditions, the historian views the past in terms of the unreconciled opposi-tions – between rationalism and voluntarism, intellectualism andempiricism – and finds his or her own ethical impulse in the need to

ix

repeat the moment of their Kantian reconciliation. This is the momentin which human subjectivity’s imagined journey towards self-knowledgeterminates, with the recovery of the cognitive and moral laws responsi-ble for the organisation of subjectivity itself. Considering that it was Kanthimself who first viewed the history of philosophy in these terms, dialec-tical philosophical history is uniquely suited to demonstrating theepochal significance of Kantian philosophy, and may indeed be regardedas a sub-species of that philosophy.

By showing that Pufendorfian and Thomasian civil philosophy didnot in fact undergo this dialectical assimilation – by uncovering its inde-pendent cultural basis and autonomous political viewpoint – this bookdeparts fundamentally from the post-Kantian intelligibility of earlymodern intellectual history. Many readers will no doubt find the intel-lectual terrain to be traversed unfamiliar and potentially hostile. Themoral world in which Pufendorf and Thomasius lived was not the onewhose laws Kant recovered. Further, the forms of personhood they cul-tivated were not ones governed by the norms of ‘pure practical reason’.Their world had its own moral cosmology, unlike the quasi-Platonic onethat organised Kant’s cosmos, yet one whose ‘Epicurean’ bleakness wassuited to a Europe still dealing with the aftermath of a period of pro-tracted religious warfare. Similarly, their sense of self was shaped by a‘pessimistic’ moral anthropology far removed from Christian–Platonicpursuit of pure rational being that drove metaphysical philosophy fromLeibniz through Wolff to Kant and beyond. In sketching the relationbetween civil and metaphysical philosophy in these terms – in treatingthe worlds they envisaged and the persons they posited as grounded infree-standing rival anthropologies and cosmologies – we begin tomeasure the distance to be travelled from post-Kantian conceptions ofa unified ‘humanity’ or ‘reason’.

In recasting the landscape of early modern intellectual history intothese unreconciled and unfamiliar shapes, I have drawn on two mainintellectual instruments. Firstly, and fundamentally, I have drawn on aparticular approach to the history of philosophy. This is one whichfocuses on the ‘ascetic’ or self-transformative work that certain philoso-phies require their adherents to perform on themselves, only thenaddressing the objects of knowledge to which they promise access. Thisapproach holds the key to retrieving civil philosophy from its dialecticalassimilation, and to placing civil and metaphysical philosophy on thesame historical footing – as rival alternative modes of philosophical cul-tivation. It does so principally by treating their different anthropologies

x Preface

and cosmologies not in terms of the self they uncover or the cosmos theyreveal, but in terms of the self they seek to shape for a world they envis-age. The objective of this approach is not to explain the philosophies byreducing them to a different order of reality – to the structures of societyor the forms of subjectivity – but to redescribe the operations of thephilosophical discourses themselves, treating them as autonomous andirreducible ‘spiritual exercises’.

Secondly, I have made use of a particular view of the political andreligious history of early modern Germany. This is a view that focuseson the role of confessionalisation in precipitating the Thirty Years War(–); the role of the ‘deconfessionalising’ or ‘desacralising’ of pol-itics in ending this war; and the central role of ‘political law’ (Staatsrecht,jus publicum) and its jurisprudence in this process of deconfessionalisa-tion. I argue that the post-Westphalian ‘intellectual civil war’ betweenmetaphysical and civil philosophy – first encountered in Leibniz’s unre-strained attack on Pufendorf ’s natural law doctrine – is properly under-stood as a clash between rival ways of responding to this profoundhistorical process. Responding positively to the uncoupling of civil andreligious governance, Pufendorf developed a doctrine of natural law inwhich the exercise of political power (the ‘civil kingdom’) was segregatedfrom the sphere of life in which the pursuit of moral perfection tookplace (the ‘kingdom of truth’). He thus sought to reconstruct moral phi-losophy by replacing the unified moral personality with a plurality ofpersonae suited to the diverse ‘offices’ – religious and civil, private andpublic, ecclesiastical and political – of citizens in desacralised states.Leibniz, however, responded to the post-Westphalian separation of pol-itics and religious morality by seeking their reconciliation at a higherlevel, through metaphysics. Here it was envisaged that law and politicscould once again be grounded in the sacralising pursuit of moral per-fection, with all of life’s offices finding their point of unity in the meta-physical recovery of their transcendent intellection.

If these rival intellectual cultures were not destined for reconciliationin Kant’s discovery of ‘the subject’ – or in a ‘history’ tracing the dialec-tical patterns of such a discovery – then we must look elsewhere for theterrain on which they clashed. We find this in a cluster of religious, polit-ical, legal, and cultural institutions housed in the early modern GermanEmpire and the territorial sovereign states which were emerging from itsshell. For our immediate concerns, the early modern university plays thekey role here. It was responsible for articulating the rival cultures to thereligious, juridical and political institutions of Empire and state, through

Preface xi

the manner in which it formed particular intellectual elites. At the verycentre of this nexus, we find the competing anthropologies and cos-mologies of civil and metaphysical philosophy; for the personae theycultivated were those suited to the moral callings of a particular institu-tional array, even as the profound differences between their modes ofcultivation bear witness to the deeply divergent ways in which they envis-aged this institutional world.

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy thus sought to complete the desacralisa-tion of civil governance by transforming the pedagogies through whichyoung Protestant intellectuals – jurists in particular – acquired theirsense of self and relation to the world. His Epicurean anthropology wasdesigned to form civil intellectuals who would confine the pursuit ofmoral truth to a private domain, while placing their political rights andexpertise at the disposal of a sovereign who governed without regard forsuch truth. Conversely, Leibniz’s (Platonic) metaphysical anthropologyenvisaged a person whose self-perfecting ascent to the domain of tran-scendent concepts (‘perfections’) qualified them to exercise an integralmoral–civil authority, in the persona of the sage–prince. In other words,if early modern civil and metaphysical philosophy were not conflictingtheories destined to be reconciled and superseded in Kant’s discovery ofthe transcendental conditions of subjectivity, that is because they wereindependent rival intellectual cultures. Each represented a programmefor reconfiguring the relations between religious and civil governance inits own way, through the ‘ascetic’ fashioning of the personages it deemedsuited to the world it envisaged. Rather than reconciling and supersed-ing these conflicting cultures, Kantian philosophy may be regarded asan extension of the metaphysical one – offering its own ‘critical’ versionof the ascent to the domain of transcendent perfections.

In recasting the topography of early modern German intellectualhistory in this way, this book does not of course pretend completeness.It is rather a sketch of an alternative kind of historical intelligibility forthe period, an essay in reinterpretation and redescription. TheIntroduction offers further clarification of our points of departure fromexisting accounts, while the two chapters of Part provide overviews ofthe available ways of approaching Schulmetaphysik and civil philosophy.In Part we offer detailed reconstructions of the major civil philoso-phers, Pufendorf and Thomasius, and their metaphysical rivals, Leibnizand Kant. Here of course we are not referring to personal rivalrybetween the philosophers – although that perspective partially applies tothe relationship between Pufendorf and Leibniz – but to the cultural

xii Preface

rivalry between the philosophical styles they personified. In exploringthis rivalry through the work of some of its central protagonists, ouressay takes an interdisciplinary form, centred in intellectual and philo-sophical history, but drawing on the history of politics, jurisprudence,and theology, with excursions into the history of religion and church law.Although this essayistic strategy might bring discomfort to specialists inthese fields, no disrespect for their work is intended. On the contrary, inbringing their several domains together, in order to refashion a part ofintellectual history too long under the domination of a particular view-point, I pay homage to them. Should this book be regarded as seeing anyfurther than those it challenges, that would be due to the stature of theworks on whose shoulders it stands.

Preface xiii

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the award of a Queen Elizabeth II research fellowship, I havebeen able to devote four years’ undistracted labour to the research andwriting of this book. I therefore gratefully acknowledge the generoussupport of the Australian Research Council, without which such a long,intensive, and single-minded project would have been difficult to con-template and impossible to complete in a reasonable period of time. Iam also pleased to acknowledge the continuing support of GriffithUniversity’s School of Humanities, where I have worked for so long andso happily, and to thank the staff of the University’s Inter-Library Loanservice for their tireless searching after obscure volumes. My final insti-tutional appreciation is for the hospitality of the English Department ofJohns Hopkins University, where I spent an enjoyable and productivesemester in the spring of .

During the writing of this work many colleagues were interestedor kind enough to discuss its contents and read sections for me. I haveprobably not mentioned all of them if I offer my thanks in this regardto Tony Bennett, Natalie Brender, John Frow, Stephen Gaukroger,Wayne Hudson, Jeff Malpas, Thomas Mautner, Alec McHoul, DouglasMagendanz, David Owen, and Dugald Williamson. I am also indebtedto Dieter Freundlieb, who offered me both philosophical conversationand linguistic expertise, when my grasp of seventeenth-century Germanreached its limits. During my visit to Johns Hopkins I was fortunateenough to share the company and conversation of William Connollyand Jane Bennett, enjoying their hospitality and insights in equalmeasure. At that time I was also fortunate in meeting John Pocock,enjoying one of his seminars on Edward Gibbon and later a conversa-tion on the ‘varieties of Enlightenment’, both memorable occasions forme. Among the colleagues with whom I have worked closely, I owespecial thanks to Denise Meredyth and to Jeffrey Minson and BarryHindess, both of whom have read several chapters, responding with

xiv

unfailingly helpful commentary and advice. Finally in this regard I takespecial pleasure in tallying the debt of gratitude owed to my colleagueand friend of many years, David Saunders. He has been a constant dis-cussant throughout the development of this project, providing unerringguidance on everything from basic intellectual premises to the transla-tion of early modern academic Latin.

In addition to these friends and colleagues, I owe thanks to severalscholars whom I first encountered through their published works, butwho were kind enough to offer advice and encouragement to an acade-mic stranger. In addition to all I have learned from their writings, JamesTully and Knud Haakonssen have been very helpful in allowing me tosee the project from the perspective of the international community ofscholars working on similar issues. I owe a similar debt of thanks toHorst Dreitzel, who went out of his way to provide me with extensiveand bracing commentary on the Thomasius and Kant chapters, and toJerome Schneewind, with whom I had several memorable discussions inthe northern spring of , even if these resulted in both of us realis-ing how differently we approached the question of Kant. Finally, during, I was fortunate in meeting several scholars who have recently com-pleted doctorates or books on topics closely associated with the subjectof this book. Although the revision process has not permitted me to takefull advantage of it, I should nonetheless like to record my appreciationfor the work of Thomas Ahnert, Robert von Friedeburg, Frank Grunert,Timothy Hochstrasser, Michael Seidler, and Peter Schröder.

Needless to say, few, if any, of these colleagues and friends agreed witheverything they encountered in my arguments, and none of them isresponsible for the errors that remain in this book, which are all my owndoing.

Acknowledgements xv

Abbreviations and texts used

KANT

Except for the Critique of Pure Reason, for which I use the standard A and B pag-ination of the first and second editions, all references to Kant are to KantsGesammelte Schriften, edited by the German (formerly the Royal Prussian)Academy of Sciences in twenty-nine volumes (Walter de Gruyter, –). Inreferencing Kant’s texts I have adopted the convention of first citing the rel-evant passage in the Akademie edition, by volume and page number, pairingthis with the relevant reference to the Cambridge Edition of the Works of ImmanuelKant. I have adjusted the Cambridge translations wherever this seemed nec-essary. Abbreviations of the relevant volume titles from the Cambridge Editionfollow.

CPR Critique of Pure Reason, ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, .

LE Lectures on Ethics, ed. Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, .

LM Lectures on Metaphysics, ed. Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .

PP Practical Philosophy, ed. Mary J. Gregor and Allen Wood. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, .

RRT Religion and Rational Theology, ed. Allen W. Wood and George DiGiovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .

TP Theoretical Philosophy –, ed. David Walford and Ralf Meerbote.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .

LEIBNIZ

CP Confessio Philosophi/Das Glaubensbekenntnis des Philosophen. (KritischeAusgabe mit Einleitung, Ubersetzung, Kommentar von Otto Saame.)nd edn. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, .

DM Discourse on Metaphysics, in Lm, pp. –.Ge C. I. Gerhardt (ed.) Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm

Leibniz. vols. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, .

xvi

Gr Gaston Grua (ed.) G. W. Leibniz: Textes Inédits. vols. Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France, .

Gu G. E. Guhrauer (ed.) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Deutsche Schriften. edn, vols. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, .

Lm Leroy E. Loemker (ed.) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Philosophical Papers andLetters. nd edn. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, .

Mo The Monadology, in Lm, pp. –.PW Political Writings, ed. Patrick Riley. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, .Th Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of

Evil, ed. Austin Farrer. La Salle: Open Court, .TS Theologisches System/Systema Theologicum, ed. C. Haas. Hildesheim:

Georg Olms,

PUFENDORF

DJN De Jure Naturae et Gentium Libri Octo/On The Law of Nature and of Nationsin Eight Books. Trans. C. H. Oldfather and W. A. Oldfather. Oxford:Clarendon Press, .

DOH De Officio Hominis et Civis juxta Legem Naturalem Libri Duo/On the Duty ofMan and Citizen According to Natural Law. Trans. Michael Silverthorne,ed. James Tully. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .

DHR De Habitu Religionis Christianae ad Vitam Civilem/Of the Nature andQualification of Religion in Reference to Civil Society. London: Roper andBosvile, .

DSH De Statu Hominum Naturali/Samuel Pufendorf ’s On the Natural State of Men,the Latin Edition and English Translation, ed. Michael Seidler.Lewiston N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, .

GW Gesammelte Werke, ed. Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann. Berlin: AkademieVerlag, –.

THOMASIUS

ADS Auserlesene deutsche Schriften (Selected German Writings, vols.). AW, vols.‒.

ASL Ausübung der Sittenlehre (Practice of Ethics). Hildesheim: Georg Olms, .AW Ausgewählte Werke, ed. Werner Schneiders. Hildesheim: Georg Olms,

–EHP Einleitung zur Hof-Philosophie (Introduction to Court Philosophy). AW, vol. .ESL Einleitung zur Sittenlehre (Introduction to Ethics). AW, vol. .FJN Fundamenta juris naturae et gentium ex sensu communi deducta, /

Grundlehren des Natur- und Völker-Rechts, nach dem sinnlichen Begriff allerMenschen vorgestellet (Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations, Deducedfrom Common Sense). Halle: Rengerischer Buchhandlung, .

IJD Institutiones jurisprudentiae divinae, / Drey Bücher der Göttlichen

List of abbreviations and texts used xvii

Rechtsgelahrtheit (Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence). Halle: RengerischerBuchhandlung, .

KPK Kurzer Entwurf der politischen Klugheit, sich selbst und andern in allen men-schlichen Gesellschaften wohl zu Raten und zu einer gescheiten Conduite zu gelan-gen (Brief Outline of Political Prudence, for the good counsel and sensible conductof oneself and others in all human societies, ). Frankfurt am Main:Athenäum, .

KTS Kleine Teutsche Schriften (Shorter German Writings). AW, vol. .PD Preliminary Dissertation (to the Institutiones jurisprudentiae divinae), in IJD,

pp. –.RFM Vom Recht evangelischer Fürsten in Mitteldingen oder Kirchenzeremonien (Of the

Right of Protestant Princes in Middle-Things/Adiaphora or Religious Ceremonies,), in ADS, AW, vol. , pp. –.

RFS Das Recht evangelischer Fürsten in theologischen Streitigkeiten (The Right ofProtestant Princes in Theological Controversies). Halle: Christoph SalfeldVerlag, .

SEG Summarischer Entwurf der Grundlehren, die einem Studioso Iuris zu wissen undauf Universitäten zu Lernen nötig sind (Summary Outline of the Basic DoctrinesNecessary for a Student of Law to Know and Learn in the Universities, ).Aalen: Scientia Verlag, .

VG Vorrede (Foreword to Grotius), in Hugo Grotius: De Jure Belli ac Pacis LibriTres/Drei Bücher vom Recht des Krieges und des Friedens Paris , ed. WalterSchätzel. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, , pp. –.

VKR Vollständige Erläuterung der Kirchenrechts-Gelahrtheit oder GründlicheAbhandlung vom Verhältniß der Religion gegen den Staat (Complete Explanationof the Jurisprudence of Church Law or Fundamental Treatise on the Relation ofReligion to the State), nd edn. . Aalen: Scientia Verlag, .

WOLFF

GE Vernünftige Gedanken von der Menschen Tun und Lassen, zu Beförderung ihrerGlückseeligkeit (German Ethics ), ed. H. W. Arndt. Reprint,Hildesheim: Georg Olms, .

GL Vernünftige Gedanken von den Kräften des menschlichen Verstandes (German Logic), ed. H. W Arndt. Reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, .

GM Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allenDingen überhaupt (German Metaphysics ), ed. C. A. Corr. Reprint,Hildesheim: Georg Olms, .

GP Vernünftige Gedanken von dem gesellschaftlichen Leben der Menschen und inson-derheit dem gemeinen Wesen (German Politics ), ed. H. W. Arndt. Reprint,Hildesheim: Georg Olms, .

VRW Von den Regenten die sich der Weltweisheit befleistigen, und von den Weltweisen diedas Regiment führen (On Princes who Cultivate Philosophy, and Philosophers whoDirect Government), in Gesammelte Kleine Philosophische Schriften .Hildesheim: Georg Olms, , pp. –.

xviii List of abbreviations and texts used

Note on conventions

The word economics is spelled in two different ways: ‘oeconomics’ indi-cates the early modern discipline concerned with household manage-ment, while the standard spelling ‘economics’ is used for more generalreference.

Where bracketed interpolations occur in quoted text, round bracketsindicate the original author’s or translator’s interpolations, square brack-ets indicate mine.

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Introduction

I now believe that it would be right to begin my book with someremarks on metaphysics as a kind of magic . . .

For, when once I began to speak of the ‘world’ (and not of thistree or table), what did I wish if not to conjure something of thehigher order into my words . . .

Of course, here the elimination of magic itself has the characterof magic.

Work in philosophy – like work in architecture in many respects –is really more work on oneself. On one’s own conception. On one’sway of seeing things. (And what one asks of it.)

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Despite the recognition of different national, cultural, and religiousenlightenments, and regardless of recurrent doubts about the utility ofthe concept itself, a dominant form of intellectual history remains com-mitted to the reality of a single process or project of Enlightenment,even if this is something that has to be synthesised from diverse intellec-tual expressions, institutional settings, and historical locales. Horst Stukeoffers a classic instance of this historiography in his Begriffsgeschichte ofAufklärung, written for that great encyclopedia of German conceptualhistory, the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Stuke ). Despite his illuminat-ing sketch of a variety of different forms of enlightenment – rangingfrom the Pietists’ doctrine of spiritual rebirth to the Wolffian conceptionof conceptual self-clarification – Stuke’s history is one of the progressiveunification and conceptualisation of these ‘programmatic’ enlighten-ments. The key stages on the way are Kant’s ‘formalisation’ of theconcept of Aufklärung – which treats it as human reason’s recovery of itsown intellectual and moral laws – and Hegel’s dialectical historicisationof the concept, which allows reason’s self-clarification to occur in time,

as the transcending reconciliation of a series of fundamental historicaloppositions.

Not the least remarkable aspect of Stuke’s discussion is the manner inwhich it transforms the retrospective unification of early modernenlightenments into a methodological and theoretical imperative. ForBegriffsgeschichte regards dialectical reconciliation and conceptual formal-isation as the condition of human reason’s own historical self-clarification – the latest episode of which is in fact Stuke’s article. If,however, we wished to recover the early modern enlightenments in theirfull programmatic diversity – and were we to contend that two of themost important forms of enlightenment remain as unreconciled todayas they did in early modernity – then our discussion would have to movein the opposite direction to Stuke’s. We would have to strip the Kantianformalisation and Hegelian reconciliation of Aufklärung from our histor-ical imaginations, and plunge into the turbulence of bitterly opposedprogrammes for the cultivation of human reason.

Norbert Hinske also presumes the existence of a single Enlightenment,arguing that the German Aufklärung was unified by a small number of‘fundamental ideas’. According to Hinske, the fundamental character ofthese ideas means that they arose not from an historical ethos or mythos,an ideology or faith – and not from the theological, pedagogical, juris-prudential, and political disciplines in which they occasionally foundexpression – but from the ‘work of thought’ itself: philosophy (Hinske, ). This philosophical Aufklärung, Hinske argues, is characterisedby three programmatic ideas. First is the idea of Aufklärung itself which,despite its varied formulations, is rooted in the doctrine of intellectualclarification – the recovery of the concepts underlying historical experi-ence. This doctrine was formulated by Descartes and Leibniz, systemat-ised by Wolff, and then given its definitive ‘critical’ form by Kant. Nextcomes a group of concepts – eclecticism, thinking for oneself, andmaturity (Eklektik, Selbstdenken, Mündigkeit) – which finds its unity in thefact that those possessing enlightened intellects make their own judg-ments, thereby restricting the tutelage of the state to the provision ofexternal security. Finally, there is the notion of perfectibility which,despite its several uses in various reform agendas, found its originalexpression in the Leibniz–Wolff doctrine of intellectual and moral per-fection, and its final form in Kant’s conception of the never-endingpursuit of intellectual and moral purity. Hinske concludes his explica-tion of a philosophically unified Aufklärung by arguing that its basic ideas

Introduction

‘are not simply a result of the great technical discoveries and improve-ments of modernity, or a mere consequence of the economic, social,political or religious changes, even if presumably the division of the con-fessions in Germany, with their irreconcilable controversies, contributednot a little to their articulation’ (Hinske , ). Instead, all of theprogrammatic ideas are grounded in a single basic idea, the idea of auniversal anthropology – the end or destiny of man (Bestimmung desMenschen) – which, in its turn, is identified with a universal humanreason. From this notion of human being as rational being – the notionof a reason that is self-grounding and self-acting in all spheres of life –Hinske derives what he regards as the fundamental rights and duties ofa rational society: the right to publish one’s thoughts (Öffentlichkeit, press-freedom), and the duty to respect the judgments of others (liberality,tolerance).

Hinske’s conception of a philosophical Aufklärung certainly finds anhistorical correlate in the s’ debate over ‘What is Enlightenment?’,which had been sparked by articles in the Berlinische Monatsschrift, andselections from which have been republished by Hinske and JamesSchmidt (Hinske ; J. Schmidt a). But this correlation arisesbecause only the philosophical contributions to this debate are nowtreated as significant, allowing the contributions of jurists and statesmento drop from historical sight. The central doctrine of F. H. Jacobi’s inter-vention – that political and moral freedom have a common groundingin man’s spontaneous intellectual being – is typical of the philosophicalessays, especially those by Kant, Reinhold, Tieftrunk, and Bergk. Theconclusions that Jacobi draws from this doctrine are also broadly repre-sentative: ‘Where there is a high degree of political freedom in fact, notjust in appearance, there must be no less a degree of moral freedompresent. Both are grounded exclusively in the rational nature of man,and their power and effect is thus to make men ever more human, evermore capable of self-government, of ruling their passions, of beinghappy and without fear’ (Jacobi , ). No less significant in thisregard is Jacobi’s Kantian affirmation that human reason and moralityare realised through freely self-imposed laws. His adherence to Kantianautonomy means that Jacobi regards ‘externally’ prescribed laws – lawsformulated by jurists and statesmen – as intrinsically corrupting ofhumanity. Displaying an uncanny gift for rewriting history in accor-dance with the Kantian spirit of his times, he asserts that it was not lawand the state that put an end to the destructive wars of religion but ‘theceaseless striving of reason’ (). Finally, in concluding his defence of

Introduction

society as a self-regulating organism of individual rights and duties,Jacobi pays a back-handed compliment to the monstrous mechanicalstates designed by Machiavelli and Hobbes; for they at least honestlyshow the political consequences of viewing man as a creature of pas-sions requiring external juridical and political governance.

The success of this rewriting of history can be measured not just inHinske’s assumption of an anti-statist philosophical Aufklärung, but alsoin James Schmidt’s comment that Jacobi’s essay should be interpreted aspart of a ‘liberal’ critique of enlightened absolutism ( J. Schmidt b,). So well had the Kantian philosophers of the s done their work– burying all signs of the role of law and state in achieving a liberal set-tlement to the religious civil wars – that their descendants of the sno longer have to bother with any other enlightenment. It is, however,just this success of the philosophical Aufklärung in rewriting history in itsown image that makes it unsuited to understanding a different concep-tion of enlightenment, one which had emerged a century earlier andhad never gone away.

Christian Thomasius’ Institutiones Jurisprudentiae Divinae had been pub-lished in , with the German translation appearing in under thetitle Drey Bücher der Göttlichen Rechtsgelahrtheit (Three Books of DivineJurisprudence), which is the edition I have used. In his Foreword to thistranslation, ‘On the Obstacles to the Spread of Natural Jurisprudence’,Ephraim Gerhard was also convinced that he stood on the threshold ofa new enlightened epoch; yet his conception of the source and directionof enlightenment differs markedly from that of the philosophers of thes and their modern descendants: ‘We live in a time when, over thelast several years, things in the empire of scholarship have so altered, thatfrom now onwards those who served in it a hundred years earlier wouldscarcely find their right way – so different is the shape that the scienceshave assumed since then . . . I believe, though, that this kind of transfor-mation is to be remarked not just in the zones of philosophy, as some liketo imagine, but also and in fact principally in our jurisprudence’ (IJD,Fwd, § ). For Gerhard it is not philosophy – in the line that would runfrom Leibniz through Wolff to Kant – that is responsible for enlighten-ment, but the rebirth of jurisprudence and natural law, which heascribes to a different intellectual trio: ‘Certainly those possessing asomewhat enlightened understanding [aufgeklährtern Verstand] could onlytake pleasure in the lights which Grotius, Pufendorf, Thomasius andothers have displayed for us through their industry; because through thisthe true ground of all laws has been revealed to us much more clearly

Introduction

than before’ (§ ). In fact, Gerhard regards philosophy as impeding thespread of the new jurisprudence through the universities and court-rooms of Germany; for the academic moral philosophers teach the dis-cipline of natural law in such a subtle and abstract manner that itbecomes all but useless for the affairs of the state and the needs of dailylife (§§ –). This problem, Gerhard argues, is compounded by the uni-versity’s curricular and faculty structure. In compelling law students tostudy moral philosophy before beginning their legal studies, this struc-ture leads many to misunderstand the specific nature of the law, bring-ing forth instead ‘either mere philosophical and abstractive chimeras ora mish-mash of moral philosophy, decorum, and even theological prin-ciples’ (§ ).

Gerhard’s Foreword belongs to the genre of ‘histories of morality’. AsTimothy Hochstrasser has shown, this genre was intended to support thespread of the new doctrines of natural law – those of Grotius, Pufendorf,and Thomasius – by making them central to overturning Protestant neo-scholasticism (Hochstrasser ). In his own Preliminary Dissertation tothe Institutiones – another instance of this genre – Thomasius spells outthe enlightening role of jurisprudence and natural law in more detailthan Gerhard and with greater élan. Treating his own enlightenment assymptomatic of the new path, Thomasius recalls that during his studentyears at the University of Leipzig his theology and philosophy professors– Valentin Alberti in particular – had attempted to keep him in the dark,teaching their own metaphysical version of natural law, and warninghim off the works of Samuel Pufendorf, whom they branded an innova-tor and heretic. Thomasius read Pufendorf anyway, and his account ofthe effect this had on him is worth quoting in full:

At that time I began to dispel some of the dark clouds which had previouslyobscured my understanding. Before then I had imagined that all things com-monly defended by the theologians were purely and simply good theologicalmatters, which an honorable man must by all means hold in respect, so that no-one would brand him as a heretic or innovator, honorifics which then amountedto the same thing. After I had rightly considered how theology differs from phi-losophy though, and also read with greater care that which was written aboutpolitics and political law [Fürsten Recht] ( jus publicum), I learned to recognise thatcommonly all kinds of things were unanimously defended by the theologianswhich have nothing to do with theology, but belong in ethics or jurisprudence.But these things were commonly passed off as theology because the philosophersmake do with the number of their eleven Aristotelian virtues and the jurists withtheir glossing. And the theologians – first in fact the Catholics and then our[Lutheran] ones – gave cause and opportunity [for this], because no-one took

Introduction

responsibility for claiming this noble area of wisdom, just as if a thing had noowner. [I also recognised] that the power and right of someone to declareanother a heretic belonged to no private person – even if they were great andfamous – but only to the prince. Finally [I saw] that an innovator is no heretic,and that this title, like the name heretic, had suffered great misuse. And I sawthat through these propositions Pufendorf convinced his opponents, who hadnot the slightest hope of basing their victory on their false principles.

I therefore began to hesitate and to hold the moral philosophy of the aca-demics [Sittenlehre der Schul-lehrer] in contempt. (PD, §§ –, –)

Thomasius’ sketch of his ‘civil’ enlightenment makes two pointswhich are in fact symptomatic of a fundamental parting of the ways inthe academic culture of early modern Germany. In the first place,Thomasius records that through his reading of politics and politicaljurisprudence (Fürstenrecht, Staatsrecht, jus publicum) he discovered thattheologians and Christian natural jurists were guilty of mixing theologyand ‘philosophy’ – that is, revealed and natural knowledge. In mixingrevealed biblical truths and the naturally known truths of jurisprudence,ethics, and politics, they obscured the autonomy of jurisprudence andintruded on intellectual domains that were none of their business. Weshall see that Thomasius laid this miscegenation of revealed and naturalknowledge squarely at the door of university metaphysics – a disciplineoffering philosophical explication of religious doctrine and transcendentfoundations for philosophical concepts, to the detriment of both faithand knowledge. Next, says Thomasius, he realised that, in laying thecharge of heresy, university theologians like Alberti were claiming toexercise civil power on the basis of their religious capacity. This was com-pletely unacceptable to Pufendorfian natural law and Staatskirchenrecht(the political jurisprudence of church law). For Pufendorf holds that allcivil power and right belong solely to the prince – that is, to the secularstate – and may on no account be shared with or exercised on behalf ofthe church.

In Thomasius’ case, therefore, the divergence between Schulphilosophieand the civil sciences was marked not just by intellectual differences, butby his sense of their mutually opposed roles in the cultural politics ofearly modern Germany. Through his reading of Pufendorf ’s natural lawand political jurisprudence, Thomasius had come to a conclusion thatwould prove decisive for his whole intellectual outlook: namely, that themixing of theology and philosophy in university metaphysics was com-plicit with the disastrous mixing of religious and civil authority in theconfessional state (Döring b, ). For such neoscholastic opponents

Introduction

as Alberti, the synthesis of theology and the civil sciences (ethics, politics,jurisprudence) in university metaphysics provided the institutional–intel-lectual basis for the church’s participation in civil authority. For this madeit possible to argue that political power should be exercised to defend thepurity of the moral community as well as to guard the security of thecivil community. Conversely, the radical separation of moral theologyfrom politics and law in Pufendorfian natural law was premised on theintellectual and institutional destruction of Schulmetaphysik. Nothing lesswas required if religion was to be denied all competence in the civildomain – to be transformed into a matter of private faith rather thanpublic knowledge – thereby allowing the state to emerge as a desacral-ised exercise of sovereign power, concerned exclusively with the securityof the citizen.

The jurisprudential or civil enlightenment of the s thus differs inalmost every regard from the (Kantian) philosophical enlightenment ofthe s which, in the s, Hinske characterises in terms of its phil-osophical basis; its subjection of politics, law, and theology to universalreason; and its absorption of mythos and ethos into the universal anthro-pology of rational being. In the first place – once we have set aside thequestion-begging claim that all knowledge is philosophical in the senseof being based on transcendental concepts – it is clear that Thomasius’enlightenment is not grounded in a new form of philosophy (Leibniz–Wolff–Kant) but in a new ‘civil science’. This science is Pufendorf ’snatural law, with its component sciences of political jurisprudence(Staatsrecht), political history, and statist sovereignty doctrine. As we shallsee (.), Thomasius was familiar with the new rationalist metaphysics,particularly in its Cartesian and Wolffian forms. But he regarded thenotion of intellectual enlightenment – through recovery of the pureforms of thought – as committing the same cardinal error as scholasticmetaphysics: the mixing of theology and philosophy. For Thomasius,synthetic metaphysical reflection on the intellectual forms had been dis-credited by its use in the defence of rival confessional theologies. It hadto be replaced by the differentiated (‘eclectic’) mastery of specific civilsciences.

Next we can observe that while Thomasius may be regarded as aneclectic and Selbstdenker, his conception of intellectual independence isnot based on a notion of the primacy of the individual’s universal reasonover the specific ‘reasons of state’. On the contrary, Thomasius’Epicurean anthropology and statist (Bodinian–Pufendorfian) concep-tion of sovereignty mean that he regards individuals as incapable of

Introduction

rational self-governance and sees the state as governing on the basis ofreasons irreducible to those held by private individuals. For Thomasius,the state finds its limits not in the absolute moral and intellectual judg-ments of free rational beings – judgments whose democratic expressionit might one day become – but in the fact that it cultivates a systematicneutrality with regard to such judgments. Despite Jacobi’s claim that itwas not law and state but ‘the ceaseless striving of reason’ that hadcreated a sphere of religious toleration and moral freedom, Thomasiuswas acutely aware that this domain had indeed been constructed by thestate. Moreover, he knew that the state had secured this domain only bydeclaring itself indifferent to the private moral strivings of its citizens,thereby expelling religion from the political sphere. This transformationof political culture demanded intellectual independence in the sensethat it required jurists and politici to detach themselves from all those ‘sec-tarian’ philosophies that insisted on unifying morality and politics,church and state, within a single moral philosophy.

Despite Hinske’s claims to the contrary, it thus becomes clear thatThomasius’ civil enlightenment was indeed wedded to a particular ethos– the ethos of a caste of confessionally neutral political jurists – and,moreover, that he was developing this ethos precisely to cope with thecircumstances of confessional division and religious civil war. ForThomasius and Pufendorf, the period of confessional conflict was some-thing quite other than a theatre of the intellect in which reason coulddisplay its transcendence of historical conditions and passions. It wasinstead a theatre of social warfare, fuelled in part by a reason whosepassion for transcendence made its claims non-negotiable (Koselleck). This meant that the forms of reasoning themselves had to bemodified in order to meet the catastrophic historical circumstances inwhich they participated. This is what animated Pufendorf ’s andThomasius’ attack on university metaphysics and drove their elabora-tion of a new intellectual ethos for jurists and statesmen.

Finally, for this reason, Thomasius’ jurisprudential enlightenment isnot based in a universal anthropology assimilable to a universal humanreason – the notion of man as a rational being (Vernunftwesen). On thecontrary, Thomasius vehemently rejects the doctrine that human beingis rational or intelligible being, correctly identifying this doctrine as ascholastic improvisation on Aristotelian and Platonic metaphysics, andregarding it as wholly unsuited to modelling the intellectual deportmentof jurists and statesmen. For many of today’s intellectual historians, themetaphysical doctrine of man as a free rational being – refurbished in

Introduction

Leibniz’s monadology, systematised in Wolff’s metaphysics, and passedon to us in the form of Kant’s conception of autonomous reason – liesclose to the process and goal of history as such. They therefore overlookthe degree to which this doctrine was both highly polemical and itselfthe object of historical contestation. So conscious was Thomasius,though, of the intellectualist ethos contained in this doctrine, that hemade it the central focus of his attack on ‘sectarian philosophy’ orSchulmetaphysik. In fact a curricular programme-statement of – theSummarischer Entwurf der Grundlehren, die einem Studioso Iuris zu wissen und aufUniversitäten zu lernen nötig sind (Summary Outline of the Basic DoctrinesNecessary for a Student of Law to Know and Learn in the Universities) – he expli-citly warns his students against the intellectualist anthropology, itemis-ing its central doctrines for elimination:

Regarding the first principles of all or most sectarian philosophy: () That Godand matter were two co-equal principles. () That God’s nature consists in think-ing. () That man’s nature consists in thinking and that the welfare and happi-ness of the whole human race depends on the correct arrangement of thought.() That man is a single species and that what is good for one [person] is goodfor another. () That the will is improved through the understanding. () That itis within human capacity to live virtuously and happily. (SEG, –)

In other words, far from pointing towards a single German philosoph-ical Aufklärung that would eventually subsume Thomasius himself, theintellectualist anthropology of early modern metaphysics was somethingthat Thomasius targeted for elimination, as inimical to the civil enlight-enment that he sought to bring to his students. This enlightenmentrequired a quite different anthropology, the Epicurean image of man asa dangerous creature of his uncontrollable passions. This is the anthro-pology that Thomasius deemed necessary to model the self-restrainedintellectual deportment of those charged with clearing the confessionalminefields.

In seeking to comprehend the historical autonomy and ethical dignity ofcivil philosophy – in proposing to treat it as the unreconciled culturalrival and alternative to an anti-political and anti-juridical metaphysicalphilosophy – this book must find its place in a complex field of worksmoving in a broadly similar direction. In the world of Anglophone schol-arship, Richard Tuck was one of the first to call for a renewed attentionto the ‘modern theory of natural law’ – Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf –in order to overcome its marginalisation and assimilation in post-Kantian philosophical history (Tuck ; Tuck a; Tuck b).

Introduction

This call has in part been answered by important surveys undertaken byKnud Haakonssen and J. B. Schneewind, and by the work of a new gen-eration of scholars, including Timothy Hochstrasser, Thomas Ahnert,and Peter Schröder (Ahnert ; Haakonssen ; Hochstrasser ;Schneewind ; Schröder ). It has also been answered by somerevealing specialist studies, such as Steven Lestition’s account of theteaching of jurisprudence and natural law at Königsberg during theeighteenth century. Lestition’s study is particularly germane to this bookas it reaches for a broad heuristic concept capable of capturing the cul-tural and political significance of early modern natural and politicaljurisprudence, finding this in the notion of a ‘juristic civic conscious-ness’. This term, says Lestition, ‘will be understood to refer to the wayin which important elements of the educated and governing classes ofth and th century Germany were able to derive a highly developedintellectual orientation, professional or corporate identity, and set ofnorms for their social and political behaviour, self-representation andself-understanding from their training or work as learned “jurisconsu-lates”’ (Lestition , ). We have already glimpsed the broad outlinesof this orientation and identity, in Thomasius’ demand for an intellec-tual ethos suited to the jurists and politici of the desacralised state.

Lestition sources this notion to J. G. A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner.Closely identified with the ‘Cambridge-school’ history of politicalthought, their work provides the context for Tuck’s reinstatement of‘modern’ natural law, although Pocock and Skinner typically tie earlymodern civic consciousness to a non-juristic ‘political’ tradition of civicrepublicanism and civic virtue, rather than to ‘continental’ natural law(Pocock , –; Skinner ). Hence, while Skinner’s studies ofHobbes treat his natural law as developing a ‘civil science’ in oppositionto incendiary confessional political theologies, they derive the secular–pacificatory character of this science from humanistic–rhetoricalsources rather than political–jurisprudential ones (Skinner ; Skinner). In this regard, Donald Kelley’s jurisprudential genealogy of anearly modern civil philosophy – which focuses on the non-theologicalconstruction of civil life offered by Roman or civil law – may be regardedas a counterbalance to Skinner and Pocock’s stress on non-juristic civichumanism (Kelley ; Kelley ; Kelley ).

Nonetheless, Pocock’s recent work on Edward Gibbon is suggestive ofthe ways in which the present work intersects with the Cambridgeschool’s approach. For Pocock treats Gibbon’s anti-Platonic, anti-enthusiast civil history of religion as indicative of a distinctively English-

Introduction

Protestant variant among the ‘diversities of Enlightenment’. This was avariant whose moderate Arminian theology grounded a strategy for lim-iting the civil power of the clergy in order to avert the catastrophe ofreligious civil war (Pocock ). Even closer to our present concerns isan earlier essay on the conditions of early modern religious toleration;for here Pocock sees the ‘desacralisation of politics’ arising from an alli-ance between ‘latitudinarian’ Protestantism and ‘Erastian’ politics, heldtogether by their common rejection of political ‘enthusiasm’ and sacer-dotalism (Pocock ). Finally in this vein, we may mention JamesTully’s important introduction to his new edition of Pufendorf ’s DeOfficio and Richard Tuck’s study Philosophy and Government –,whose discussion of Grotius and Hobbes integrates the perspectives ofcivic humanism and natural law (Tuck a; Tully ). These worksmay be seen as signs of the degree to which the Cambridge school’sinitial focus on the civic republican sources of a ‘civic consciousness’ isbeing expanded through attention to the role of jurisprudence andnatural law.

This book, however, is also indebted to a distinctively German recov-ery of an early modern civil philosophy and political thought, one inwhich the disciplines of natural and political law (Naturrecht, Staatsrecht)play a central role. Perhaps the leading and certainly the most contro-versial representative of this school is Carl Schmitt, whose work issignificant for our present concerns in a number of regards. FirstSchmitt provides an important account of the historical significance ofpolitical or ‘public’ law – ‘European jus publicum’ – whose restriction ofsovereignty to the purely worldly domination of a territory he regards aseffecting a fundamental ‘detheologisation’ of politics (Schmitt ,–). Next, his discussion of the ‘autonomising of politics’ under-taken by the early modern political jurists – their separation of the‘security state’ from the spheres of morality and economy – offers afurther pointer to the central difference between the civil and metaphys-ical enlightenments (Schmitt ). Finally, Schmitt’s work is also symp-tomatically significant, for the way in which it continues the ‘intellectualcivil war’ between civil and metaphysical philosophy. Here, Schmittdeliberately targets post-Kantian ‘political Romanticism’ for its treat-ment of historical politics as the manifestation of transcendental–sub-jective categories, thereby reducing the contestation between politicalenemies to an a-political debate over the good life (Schmitt ). Similarthemes reappear in the work of Schmitt’s former student, ReinhartKoselleck. Koselleck argues that the detheologisation of politics brought

Introduction

about by early modern natural law and political jurisprudence meantthat the state developed a ‘reason’ for its existence – the preservation ofsocial peace – that floated free of the moral reason of its theological andphilosophical elite. He thus treats the advent of the Aufklärung as indica-tive of cultural and political ‘crisis’. This is a crisis in which the state’sfocus on worldly security renders it incapable of claiming a broadlyacceptable moral legitimacy, and in which the Enlightenment intelli-gentsia’s pursuit of moral perfection pushes it beyond the detheologisedpolitical sphere. From here arises the anti-political enclave politics of theAufklärung, dedicated to the moral delegitimation of the state (Koselleck). In its treatment of early modern ‘statist’ jurisprudence as anautonomous and indispensable cultural response to the catastrophe ofreligious civil war, and in its uncompromising rejection of all post-Kantian attempts to ‘resacralise’ politics by turning it into rationaldebate over the good, Schmitt’s and Koselleck’s work is an importantprecondition of the present book.

Adding a distinctively French perspective to the history of natural andpolitical law, Blandine Kriegel has argued the need to renew politicalhistory through a recovery of early modern doctrines of law and sove-reignty, as the only ones capable of dealing with the reality of the state(Kriegel ). Drawing on French work on the history of politicalthought, including studies by Michel Foucault, François Furet, and AlainBesançon, Kriegel’s work contains a timely polemic. She argues againstsocial theories of the political – theories whose sociological character isa thin disguise for their moral zeal – and in favour of grounding politi-cal thought in the history of political institutions: the institutions ofadministration, law, and sovereignty. Despite her apparent antipathy toSchmitt, Kriegel’s work intersects with his on several axes: first, in herinsistence that the political-juristic (Bodinian) concept of territorial sov-ereignty is a modern doctrine, developed as a weapon against thechurch, the Empire, and the estates; next, in her argument that thisconcept can only be understood through early modern political jurispru-dence itself, which permitted power to be juridified (secularised and his-toricised) and the law to be turned into the key form in which sovereignpower was exercised; and finally in her vivid polemic against theGerman Romantics. Like Schmitt, Kriegel regards the Romantics’ anti-political and anti-juridical conceptions of society – as united by love notlaw, and governed by the people not the state – as secularisations of relig-ious mysticism and eschatology, leading to a divinisation and totalisationof the state. We have already glimpsed these proto-Romantic views in

Introduction

Jacobi’s claim that it was the ‘ceaseless striving of reason’ – rather thanlaw and state – that put an end to religious civil war.

Finally I should mention the work of a group of German historiansof political, juridical, philosophical, and religious thought which, whilenot officially dedicated to the recovery of an early modern civil philos-ophy or civic consciousness, has nonetheless proved helpful to my ownefforts in this regard. While I presume this group to be assembled moreby the needs of this book than by any objective affiliation, their special-ist studies can be brought into a productive relation to the more generaltheses of Schmitt, Koselleck, and Kriegel. Like Blandine Kriegel, HorstDreitzel stresses the (early) modernity of seventeenth-century theories of‘absolute sovereignty’. Far from being throwbacks to feudalism or theancien régime, these theories, Dreitzel argues, responded to a distinctivelyearly modern set of circumstances: the need to defend the emergence ofthe ‘princely territorial state’ against the Empire above and the estatesbelow. Dreitzel’s emphasis however falls more on the politicisation of lawthan the juridification of politics, particularly in his ground-breakingstudy of neo-Aristotelian political science (Henning Arnisaeus) (Dreitzel). Here, it is the ‘scientific’ objectification of politics that plays thekey role in the desacralising and instrumentalising of sovereign power.Despite his tendency to understate the role of natural and political lawin this process, Dreitzel’s essays on this theme represent a decisive chal-lenge to Habermasian attempts to locate a socio-moral basis for politics,in the debating contests of middle-class Öffentlichkeit (Dreitzel ;Dreitzel ; Dreitzel ; Dreitzel ; Dreitzel b).

There is no understatement of the juridical in the work of MartinHeckel, the leading historian of that particularly German discipline,Staatskirchenrecht, or the political jurisprudence of church law. In a seriesof indispensable studies, Heckel has argued that the secularisation ofpolitics in early modern Germany was not the reflex expression of anepochal philosophical breakthrough or general rationalisation of society.Rather, it arose when, under the circumstances of religious civil war,Protestant jurists, working within the framework of the Imperial legalapparatus, developed a series of crucial political–legal doctrines. Themost important of these were civil parity between the three main con-fessions; primacy of the secular prince in religious affairs; andindifference to religious and moral truth in political settlements to con-fessional conflicts (Heckel ; Heckel ). These doctrines – embod-ied in the Peace of Augsburg in and reiterated more successfully inthe Treaty of Westphalia in – made worldly political power

Introduction

supreme in all matters pertaining to social peace. They nonetheless pre-served a free space for transcendent religions and philosophies inside theenvelope of civil security, which now lay beyond their moral and theo-retical reach (Heckel ; Heckel ; Heckel ). Although he doesnot speak of a jurisprudential or civil enlightenment, Heckel’s workclearly suggests that the core ‘liberal’ rights of religious freedom and tol-eration did not arise from a rationalist philosophy of intellectual self-clarification and self-governance. They emerged instead from thejuridical desacralisation of politics, carried out in the domain of positiveStaatsrecht and subsequently surfacing in practical philosophy as the‘modern theory of natural law’ – Grotius, Pufendorf, Thomasius.

Something like this view seems to inform Christoph Link’s treatmentof the right to religious freedom as a right created by the state’s politi-cal–jurisprudential pacification of society in the seventeenth century.According to Link, it was not until the end of the eighteenth century –when its origins had been actively repressed by Kantian theories of ina-lienable subjective rights – that religious freedom came to be seen as aright of ‘society’ or the individual against the state (Link ). In thislight, Jacobi, Kant, and the other philosophers of the s appear lesslike intellectual architects of the desacralised liberal state and more likebelated political theologians seeking this state’s resacralisation. Writingin a similar vein, Diethelm Klippel takes us back to our point of depar-ture, arguing that the eighteenth century witnessed the overlapping oftwo kinds of natural law and two conceptions of enlightenment: oneassociated with Pufendorf and Thomasius which operated through theenlightenment (juridifying and secularising) of the prince or state; andthe other associated with Kant which came to see state power itself asthe problem, relocating enlightenment in individual reason and freedom(Klippel ). Significantly, and unusually, Klippel argues that both ofthese conceptions of enlightenment passed into the nineteenth century,which means that if we are to avoid suppressing one or the other of themwe must give up the idea of a single German Aufklärung (Klippel ).

Our initial sketch of a ‘civil enlightenment’ – pre-dating the philo-sophical Aufklärung by a century or more, and arising from sources quiteother than the ‘work of thought’ – would therefore seem to find its moor-ings in a substantial body of historical work. Here, there is a significantconsensus that a civil enlightenment – that is, the first moves to establishreligious toleration, detheologise politics, separate civil society fromreligious community – emerged as a response to the devastation of relig-ious civil war. Further, despite significant disagreement over the primacy

Introduction

of law or politics in the process, and notwithstanding some unresolvedquestions regarding the contribution of ‘moderate’ Protestantism, thereis broad agreement that the desacralisation of politics was formulatedthrough an ensemble of ‘civil sciences’ – ‘modern’ natural law, politicallaw, neo-Aristotelian and neo-Stoic political sciences, civic republican-ism – rather than through university metaphysics or moral philosophy.Finally, although we might lose some members of the Cambridge schoolat this point, there is some agreement that this civil enlightenment, withits ‘juristic civic consciousness’, was grounded in something quite otherthan the self-governing individual or the moral community: namely, inthe measures by which early modern political jurists sought to put an endto religious civil war, by restricting the ends of the state to security.

From this broad body of works and themes this book thus drawsimportant pointers to the historical autonomy of early modern civil phi-losophy. From here we learn that the pacification of the war-tornGerman states, and the appearance of the first liberal freedoms, werenot the result of a politics grounded in the ‘ceaseless striving of reason’or the sheer ‘work of thought’. The state envisaged by Pufendorf andThomasius was one that pursued external security through diplomacyand war, and internal security through the development of a novel andpowerful double strategy. This strategy required the state’s indifferenceto the transcendent values of its constituent moral communities – anindifference they would experience as civil freedom – and its readinessto suppress all conduct threatening social peace, no matter what itssource. In proposing to return the civil enlightenment to the centre ofour historical concerns and civic imaginations – and in treating it as aculture autonomous of and rival to the metaphysical Aufklärung – thisbook will thus be centrally concerned with Pufendorf and Thomasius asinheritors of the political-juristic desacralisation of politics.

Given the prima facie existence of such a civil enlightenment, docu-mented and discussed in a sizeable and diverse secondary literature, wemust now confront the striking fact that it either remains largely invis-ible in post-Kantian intellectual historiography, or else appears there ina scarcely recognisable form. This historiography remains transfixed bythe image of a single philosophical Aufklärung whose unity is securedthrough Kant’s philosophy of the subject, and whose central character-istic is the normative extension of rationally self-governing subjecthoodinto all areas of ‘society’ – religious, moral, political. Clearly, a self-gov-erning society grounded in reason would have little need for a political

Introduction

state grounded in security, which, according to post-Kantian anti-politics, should be left to ‘wither away’. There can be little doubt that thisimage of the progressive social expansion of philosophical reason dom-inates arguments for and against ‘the Enlightenment’ in the humanitiesacademies of Europe and America, forming one of the chief reasonswhy, in Kriegel’s words, ‘the history of political institutions must contin-ually fight uphill battles against hostile attitudes’ (Kriegel , ).

In the Anglophone scholarly world this conception of a philosophicalor metaphysical enlightenment has provided the framing principle forsuch standard works as Henry Allison’s Lessing and the Enlightenment andLewis White Beck’s Early German Philosophy – aptly subtitled Kant and HisPredecessors (Allison ; Beck ). It continues to inform recent workcomposed in the register of American Kantianism, such as J. B.Schneewind’s The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern MoralPhilosophy (Schneewind ). In Germany, the immediate context forHinske’s conception of a philosophical Aufklärung is provided by suchscholars as Michael Albrecht, Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, WernerSchneiders, and others now grouped around the journal Aufklärung(Albrecht ; Schmidt-Biggemann a; Schmidt-Biggemann ;Schneiders ; Schneiders ). But this work leads back, via suchearly-twentieth-century neo-Kantians as Heinz Heimsoeth and MaxWundt, to their nineteenth-century predecessors Kuno Fischer andKarl Rosenkranz (Fischer –; Heimsoeth ; Heimsoeth a;Rosenkranz ; Wundt ; Wundt ; Wundt ). From here itis a short step to the philosophical histories of Kant’s contemporaries –J. G. Buhle, W. G. Tennemann, and C. F. Stäudlin – which, as Hoch-strasser has argued, were the first to erase civil philosophy from thehistorical map, replacing it with the Leibniz–Wolff–Kant canon(Hochstrasser , –).

This is the line through which today’s post-Kantian intellectualhistory has inherited its characteristic conception of a philosophicalAufklärung: the notion of enlightenment as the transcendental self-clarification of an intellectual being whose recovery of spontaneousrational self-governance forms the basis of a free society under morallaws (Ritzel ). Given the evident conflict between this conceptionand the prima facie existence of a very different civil enlightenment –grounded in juridical pacification rather than metaphysical self-clarification, and in the sovereignty of a morally indifferent state ratherthan that of a morally self-governing people – post-Kantian intellectualhistory has adopted two strategies, those of exclusion and assimilation.

Introduction

In seeking to exclude civil philosophy from their story of ‘Enlighten-ment philosophy’, post-Kantian intellectual historians have argued thatit belongs to the history of law and politics. Wundt thus classifiesPufendorf ’s work as ‘jurisprudence’ while Beck treats it as ‘politics’, bothwriters admitting the great natural jurist to their work only fleetingly, asthe precursor of Thomasius, whose work they can more easily treat asphilosophy (Wundt , –; Beck , –). The effect of this, ofcourse, is retrospectively to transform the history of philosophy into thehistory of metaphysics. ‘Philosophy’ comes to signify the particular lineof metaphysical philosophy that runs from Leibniz through Wolff toKant, and from Kant through the Romantics and Hegel into modernmetaphysics, dialectics, and ‘critical theory’. The problem with this strat-egy is that in early modern German universities what was to count as phil-osophia – typically translated as Weltweisheit – was itself a matter of explicitand bitter contestation. We have already seen Thomasius warning hisstudents off the intellectualist anthropology of university metaphysics, onthe grounds that its pursuit of transcendent rationality is wholly unsuitedto the formation of those destined for legal and political careers.Conversely, we shall see that in defending the metaphysical conceptionof natural law – as the transcendent recovery of the pure concept ofjustice – Leibniz’s ‘philosophy of law’ is no less a polemical attempt tocapture the terrain of philosophy than Thomasius’. For modern histo-rians to describe the civil sciences and their enlightenment as non-philo-sophical – in order to preserve the unity of a philosophical Aufklärung – isthus itself both anachronistic and polemical, symptomatic in fact of thecontinuing struggle to capture and configure the terrain of philosophy.

It is, however, the tactics of assimilation employed by post-Kantianintellectual and philosophical history that are of more immediateconcern to us. There are three of these, the first and most important ofwhich is the dialectical method itself. By positioning metaphysical andcivil philosophy as mutually opposed and mutually deficient ‘theories’ –intellectualism versus empiricism, rationalism versus voluntarism – thismethod uproots the conflicting intellectual cultures from their historicalcircumstances, transforming them into subjective ‘ideas’, and preparingthem for absorption into Kant’s discovery of the transcendental groundsof subjectivity. If this method is definitive of the classic studies by Wundtand Beck, then it remains powerfully present in the most recenthistoriography of the Aufklärung, particularly in the work of WernerSchneiders, Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, and many of the writersassociated with the journal Aufklärung.

Introduction

For Schneiders, it is Thomasius and Wolff who are the bearers of theopposed styles of philosophy. Treating him as the harbinger of GermanBürgerphilosophie, Schneiders characterises Thomasius as developing anethical and existential style of philosophy, by limiting philosophy toknowledge beneficial to man’s civil life, and by grounding it in a practi-cal knowledge of the good rather than a speculative knowledge of thetruth (Schneiders b, –; Schneiders , –). Wolff, on theother hand, is (not inaccurately) treated as renewing the scholastic meta-physical conception of philosophy – as the recovery of the intelligibleforms underlying empirical things – which he modernises usingLeibniz’s ‘Scotist’ construction of possibility in terms of non-contradic-tory concepts. Wolff thus treats merely ‘historical’ (empirical) knowledgeas vulgar, while regarding philosophy as a rational science of ‘the pos-sible as possible’ (Schneiders b, –; Schneiders , –).Again, the mutually deficient philosophies are destined for reconcilia-tion, at first in the Popularphilosophen – who mix Thomasian civics andWolffian metaphysics without transcending them – and then in Kant,who transcends the oppositions by turning history itself into the groundof rational possibility (Schneiders b, –). At first sight, Schmidt-Biggemann’s version of this history would seem closer to our own; forhe treats the metaphysics of Leibniz and Wolff and the Bürgerphilosophieof Thomasius as indicative of rival conceptions of Aufklärung, the oneoriented to intellectual self-clarification, the other to social improvement(Schmidt-Biggemann a, –). Such is the power of the dialecticalmethod, however, that Schmidt-Biggemann is forced to treat these phi-losophies as mutually deficient – the former failing to ground reason inhistory, the latter failing to ground historical reform in reason – pointingtowards Kant’s reconciliatory conception of history as the arena forreason’s unfolding in time.

If the first tactic of assimilation thus involves converting civil philos-ophy into a subjective theory destined for absorption by the Kantiandialectic, then the second involves the deployment of an epochal peri-odisation based on this supersession. This periodisation identifies theleading figures of civil philosophy, Pufendorf and Thomasius, as repre-sentatives of the ‘early’ Enlightenment (Frühaufklärung) – rather than ofa rival enlightenment – hence as destined to be eclipsed by or foldedinto an evolving mature, high, or late Enlightenment, identified withthe advent of Kantian philosophy. In Schneiders’ standard version, thesupposed dominance of Thomasian voluntarism in the first twodecades of the eighteenth century characterises the Frühaufklärung. The

Introduction

eclipse of Thomasius’ Bürgerphilosophie by Wolffian rationalism in thes marks the onset of a middle Enlightenment, which peters out intothe melding of Thomasian and Wolffian perspectives in mid-centuryPopularphilosophie. Finally, the ‘high’ or late Enlightenment emerges withKant’s definitive reconciliation and transcendence of all prior opposedphilosophies in the s (Schneiders b). Schmidt-Biggemann hasrecently improvised on this dialectical periodisation in order to providea schema for the evolution of knowledge in the early modern Germanuniversity, treating the sixteenth-century university as dominated bytheology and the seventeenth by political jurisprudence (Schmidt-Biggemann ). Following the standard dialectical schema, however,Schmidt-Biggemann treats the reciprocal deficiencies of these disci-plines – theological dogmatism on one side, political utilitarianism onthe other – as destining them for eclipse by the philosophical universityof the eighteenth-century Aufklärung.

The post-Kantian assimilation of civil philosophy is completed by athird tactic: the doctrine that in recovering the transcendental conditionsof experience, Kantian philosophy floats free of historical conditionsaltogether, and represents in fact the transcendental conditions of his-torical reality. For, if Kantian philosophy has indeed recovered the formsof experience prior to the manifestation of experience as history, thenwe must accept Hinske’s claims that this philosophy depends on no his-torical mythos or ethos; that, as the pure ‘work of thought itself ’, it is theonly true vehicle of enlightenment; and that the theological and civil sci-ences are themselves only empirical outworkings of Kantian philosoph-ical concepts.

It would of course be foolhardy to doubt the assimilative power ofpost-Kantian dialectical historiography, backed as it is by the widely heldbelief that Kant actually uncovered the transcendental conditions ofsubjectivity, or at least prepared the way for Hegel’s historicised versionof them. Yet Thomasius’ attack on the intellectualist image of man con-tained in early modern metaphysics – his stigmatisation of the doctrinethat ‘man’s nature consists in thinking and that the welfare and happi-ness of the whole human race depends on the correct arrangement ofthought’ – already provides us with an historical anchor-point fromwhich to preserve civil philosophy against its dialectical assimilation. ForThomasius’ polemical rejection of it enables us to formulate a funda-mental conjecture regarding this intellectualist anthropology: namely,that this anthropology is central not just to early modern universitymetaphysics, but also to post-Kantian dialectical historiography. After

Introduction

all, in purporting to pre-empt pre-Kantian civil philosophy by positingKant’s recovery of the conditions of subjectivity as such, it would seemthat this historiography is also committed to the metaphysical image ofman – as an intelligible being capable of pre-empting empirical historythrough transcendental self-reflection.

We will return to this conjecture below. For the moment, we can useit to shed some light on the three tactics of assimilation just outlined.First, its indebtedness to this anthropology helps to explain the dialecti-cal character of post-Kantian philosophical history. For in the funda-mental oppositions required and imposed by this historiography, it ispossible to discern a projection of the divided lineaments of the meta-physician’s homo duplex. Through its fundamental positing of man as abeing of pure reason temporarily mortgaged to the experiences andinclinations of his sensible nature, university metaphysics sought to pro-gramme an ethos of intellectual self-purification and clarification. It isthe normative lineaments of homo duplex that show through in the dialec-tical historians’ exemplary oppositions: between a pure intellectualismcut off from empirical experience, and a brute empiricism lacking insightinto its transcendental conditions; between a pure rationalism incapableof providing sensible man with motivating norms, and an impure vol-untarism incapable of providing such norms with a rational basis. Notonly does this clarify why dialectical historiography is driven to treatmetaphysical and civil philosophy as reciprocally deficient theories, italso illuminates the ‘subjectivising’ tendency of this historiography. For,in making the rival academic cultures go proxy for the intellectual andsensible natures of homo duplex, this method treats them as open to rec-onciliation ‘in thought’ – in fact in Kant’s thinking of the transcenden-tal conditions of the empirical. We may propose, then, that in treatingcivil and metaphysical philosophy as reciprocally deficient theories, des-tined for reconciliation in the Kantian moment, post-Kantian dialecti-cal historiography is less an account of the history of the rival culturesand more a practice of metaphysics by other means.

There is thus good reason to suspend our commitment to the epochalperiodisation based on this historiography. If civil and metaphysical phi-losophy are related not as reciprocally deficient ‘ideas’ but as indepen-dent cultural movements, then their history will not be a series of stageson the way to Kantianism. This applies no less to Schneiders’ division ofeighteenth-century ‘enlightenment philosophy’ into an early, middle,and late Aufklärung, than it does to Schmidt-Biggemann’s allocation oftheology, jurisprudence, and philosophy to the sixteenth, seventeenth,

Introduction

and eighteenth centuries, respectively. For, despite Schmidt-Biggemann’sattempt to confine natural and political law to the seventeenth century,and despite Schneiders’ claim that Thomasian Bürgerphilosophie under-went metaphysical eclipse during the s, Steven Lestition has shownthat Pufendorfian–Thomasian natural law continued to function as a keyacademic discipline well into the second half of the eighteenth century.Moreover, he has shown that it maintained this role in the law faculty ofKant’s own university (Lestition ). It may indeed be that, with theKantian capture of German philosophical faculties from the s, theteaching of civil philosophy was increasingly confined to the faculties oflaw and politics. But the fact that the civil sciences of natural and polit-ical law continued to play a key role in forming the ‘juristic civic con-sciousness’ suggests that the alleged eclipsing of these sciences reflectsonly the viewpoint of their metaphysical rival, now safely in possessionof the Kantianised arts faculties.

Lastly, this indicates that we should give up the view that in reconcil-ing the oppositions between idealism and empiricism, rationalism andvoluntarism, Kant’s philosophy broke the bonds of mythos and ethostying thought to history, recovering the conditions of subjectivity itself.This will enable us to look for the mythos and ethos of Kantian philos-ophy itself, to investigate its anthropological commitments and its ethicaldemands. In this way we can begin to redescribe Kantianism, as a par-ticular historical culture of the self, neither more nor less fundamentalthan the cultures of civil and metaphysical philosophy.

It is in redescribing early modern civil and metaphysical philosophy asautonomous intellectual cultures that this book makes its own contribu-tion to the body of works on whose shoulders it stands. For, in the courseof this study I augment those political and juridical histories of the civilsciences with a particular approach to the history of philosophy. Thisapproach investigates philosophies in terms of the ‘ascetic’ relation tothe self they impose, and the ‘spiritual exercises’ that they require. Indrawing sources for this kind of investigation one may range quitewidely, from Wittgenstein’s remark that ‘work in philosophy . . . is reallymore work on oneself ’, to Foucault’s more historically orientedcomment that philosophy may be regarded as ‘an “ascesis”, askesis, anexercise of oneself in the activity of thought’ (Foucault , ;Wittgenstein , ). Here, rather than being restricted to the narrowmeaning of self-denial, the term ascetic qualifies all those intellectualpractices or ‘spiritual exercises’ whose special role is to permit attention

Introduction

to and transformation of the self. Characteristically, histories of philos-ophy in this manner focus on the anthropologies, psychologies, and cos-mologies through which the members of specific intellectual elitesacquire the capacity to take up a particular relation to themselves andtheir world. This is typically a relation that imbues such individuals witha conviction of their deviation from an ideal way of thought or life – arelation of self-problematisation. In this way they are inducted into aparticular intellectual regimen or practice of self-cultivation, throughwhich they may reshape themselves in the image of this ideal.

In a recently translated work, Pierre Hadot provides a pointer to theinvestigation of philosophies in terms of the spiritual exercises theyimpose:

We have seen that, at first glance, [the spiritual exercises] appear to vary widely.Some, like Plutarch’s ethismoi, designed to curb curiosity, anger or gossip, wereonly practices intended to ensure good moral habits. Others, particularly themeditations of the Platonic tradition, demanded a high degree of mental con-centration. Some, like the contemplation of nature as practiced in all philosoph-ical schools, turned the soul toward the cosmos, while still others – rare andexceptional – led to a transfiguration of the personality, as in the experiences ofPlotinus. We also saw that the emotional tone and notional content of theseexercises varied widely from one philosophical school to another: from themobilisation of energy and consent to destiny of the Stoics, to the relaxationand detachment of the Epicureans, to the mental concentration and renuncia-tion of the sensible world among the Platonists.

Despite this variety, Hadot continues, the different modes of self-cultureare joined by commonalities of form and function:

Beneath this apparent diversity . . . there is a profound unity, both in the meansemployed and in the ends pursued. The means employed are the rhetorical anddialectical techniques of persuasion, the attempts at mastering one’s inner dia-logue, and mental concentration. In all philosophical schools, the goal pursuedin these exercises is self-realisation and improvement. (P. Hadot , )

While successfully applied to ancient philosophy (Annas ; Browna; Brown b; Nussbaum ; Rabbow ), this approach hasnot been widely exploited in the broader history of philosophy. There is,however, at least one study of late medieval university metaphysics inthese terms, which will constitute an important resource for us(Thomassen ). There are also some important kindred discussionsof early modern Stoicism and Epicureanism (Kimmich ; Kimmich; Osler ), and we might add Oestreich’s account of Lipsian neo-Stoicism to the same series (Oestreich ). Until now, this approachhas not been applied to Kantian philosophy.

Introduction

Notwithstanding their disparate topics, and despite some significantdifferences in method and emphasis, these studies are joined by acommon historiographic approach to the investigation of ‘school’ phi-losophies. They treat the anthropologies, psychologies, and cosmologiescontained in such philosophies as reflexive ethical instruments – that is,as means by which individuals are inducted into new existential relationsto themselves and their world – rather than as quasi-scientific theories ofthe subject or the cosmos. In short, these studies investigate philosophiesas paideia rather than as theoria. As such, they open the door to a funda-mentally non-Kantian approach to the self, treating this not in terms ofa subjectivity transcendentally presupposed by experience, but in termsof one historically cultivated to meet the purposes of a particular way oflife.

As a-rational modes of fashioning persons for envisaged circum-stances, philosophical anthropologies formed the link between academicphilosophies and the larger religious and political forces that convergedon the early modern university. In attacking his metaphysical rivals,Thomasius thus focuses on their intellectualist anthropology. For heregards it as implicated in the sacerdotalism of the confessional state,and as inimical to the ‘juristic civic consciousness’ he sought to form viahis ‘Epicurean’ anthropology. In focusing on the uncontrollable passionsrather than a quasi-divine reason, Thomasius’ anthropology wouldallow man to be seen as a dangerous creature in need of civil restraintand political control. This cultural role of rival anthropologies is whatSchmitt has in mind when, in the course of discussing competing ‘opti-mistic’ and ‘pessimistic’ political anthropologies, he remarks that: ‘phi-losophy and anthropology, as specifically applicable to the totality ofknowledge, cannot, like any specialised discipline, be neutralised againstirrational life decisions’ (Schmitt , ). It is by attending to the self-formative functions of the rival philosophies and anthropologies that weshall thus come to understand the manner in which their rivalry wasinformed by larger historical conflicts, in particular that over the desa-cralisation and resacralisation of politics. This shifting of the methodo-logical axis of the history of philosophy enables us to identify six themesthat will be central to our study of the conflict between civil and meta-physical philosophy in early modern Germany.

First and foremost, it enables us to place the rival moral anthropolo-gies in a single space of historical description, thereby acquiring the neu-trality needed to treat them as objects of historical investigation. Weshall encounter several such anthropologies. In Pufendorf ’s natural lawwe discover a political anthropology of man as a creature whose violent

Introduction

passions threaten his capacity for sociality, thereby necessitating thecreation of a sovereign power capable of imposing the rules of sociabil-ity as law. Leibniz’s practical philosophy, however, is grounded in hisPlatonic ‘monadology’, treating man as an intellectual soul capable ofparticipating in the divine intellection of the substances, and therebyperfecting himself through contemplation. Following in Pufendorf ’sfootsteps, Thomasius’ quasi-Epicurean anthropology of passional mannecessitates an ethics of self-restraint and a jurisprudence of sovereigncommand. Finally, in Kant’s anthropology of man’s dual intelli-gible–sensible natures, we encounter a further elaboration of the meta-physical homo duplex, driving Kant to construct an ethics and politics interms of man’s self-purifying recovery of his self-governing rationalbeing. In none of these instances shall we be approaching the relevantanthropology as a philosophical theory that might be true or false to themoral nature of the human being. Rather, each anthropology will beinvestigated as an ethical instrument capable of impelling individuals torelate to themselves as beings possessing a particular nature – this beingthe precondition of their fashioning selves suited to differently envisagedworlds. By treating the various anthropologies as optional and equiva-lent means through which certain individuals forge the relation to theself – that is, as different forms in which individuals cross the thresholdof subjectivity and learn to deport themselves as subjects of particularkinds – we suspend all normative commitment to them. Instead, weregard them as instruments for the cultivation of particular intellectualdeportments, whose historical circumstances, purposes and distributionare matters of historical investigation and description.

Second, by placing the notion of enlightenment in this methodologi-cal context we can provide an appropriate grounding for the theme ofrival enlightenments. For this recontextualisation suggests that ‘enlight-enment’ refers to a condition of the self attained and valorised throughthe spiritual exercises of a particular ethos. In this regard the worldlyself-restraint and indifference to transcendence of the ‘Epicurean’ juristshas just as much claim to be considered enlightened as the exalted par-ticipation in divine intellection of the ‘Platonic’ metaphysicians. Allnotions of ‘the Enlightenment’ may be regarded as nominalisations ofthe adjective qualifying those who are deemed ‘enlightened’. In its turn,‘enlightened’ is the self-valorising term that the members of a particu-lar philosophical school apply to themselves – in honour of their attain-ment of a particular comportment of the self, regarded as an ideal wayof thought or life. For this reason we must give up the post-Kantian

Introduction

notion of a true enlightenment, characterised by the ‘enlightenment ofenlightenment’, or the recovery of a basic set of philosophical ideasabsorbing and unifying the different forms of enlightenment (Hinske; Schneiders ; Stuke ). In fact, this notion – which presumesthat ‘the Enlightenment’ consists in rational being’s recovery of its ownforms of intellection – may itself be regarded as a variant of the meta-physical enlightenment. For it is designed to drive scholars to dissatisfac-tion with diverse empirical-historical enlightenments, impelling them toposit a unifying origin in the ‘work of thought’, and thereby participatein a higher form of intellection. Since the s, having recognised thattheir central period-concept was too indebted to the vision and ethos ofa particular group, the historians of religion have been relegating theconcept of ‘the Reformation’ in favour of a history of multiple waves of‘confessionalisation’ (Schilling ; Schilling ; Zeeden ).Perhaps it is time for intellectual historians to move in the same direc-tion, to dissolve the monolithic Aufklärung into histories of the diverseenlightenments sought within particular early modern intellectualcultures.

Third, attending to the self-formative functions of the enlightenmentphilosophies provides an appropriate setting for a theme long discussedby historians of theology and, more recently, by cultural and intellectualhistorians: namely, that there is no sharp break between these philoso-phies and Christian theology, and no epochal shift from a religious ageto a secular ‘age of reason’ (Gründer and Rengstorf ). For a longtime it has been held that the Aufklärung witnessed the progressive eclips-ing of theology by philosophy – a progressive secularisation of thoughtand society – typically seen in Kantian terms as human reason’s recov-ery of its capacity for autonomous self-legislation. More recently,however, historians have begun to show how deeply enmeshed enlight-enment thought remains in religion, both at the level of the problems itwas confronted by, and the intellectual instruments it used to solve them.Challenging the view of Pufendorf and Thomasius as secular statists,Detlef Döring has renewed attention to them as lay theologians, preoc-cupied by the problems of confessional division, and deeply indebted toa certain kind of Protestant ‘spiritualist’ theology for their solutions tothese problems (Döring ; Döring ). If the civil philosophers thusreveal an unexpected debt to a certain kind of theology, then the depen-dency of so-called early modern rationalism on a different kind of theol-ogy is perhaps even more surprising. Yet a number of studies suggest thatmetaphysical rationalism (Leibniz, Wolff, Kant) is inseparable from a

Introduction

specific theological anthropology (Honnefelder ; Kondylis ;Sparn ; Thomassen ). This is one that figures forth God as apure mind spontaneously intelligising the conceptual forms of things,and man as the ‘sensibly affected’ rational being capable of partial par-ticipation in this intellection, giving rise to the figure of homo duplex.Rather than signifying an epochal break with religion and theology,therefore, the rival enlightenments represented two divergent attemptsto reconfigure religion, using opposed theological means. In drawing onvoluntarist theology to place the divine mind beyond human reason –hence beyond credal formulation and civil enforcement – the civil phi-losophers sought to confine salvific religion to private life. For their part,in offering ‘rational’ explications of the central Christian mysteries, themetaphysical philosophers regarded their ‘natural theologies’ as newmoral theologies for public life, shifting the locus of salvation to meta-physics itself. The divergent ways in which the two intellectual culturesaddressed the religious question were thus deeply informed by theopposed anthropologies in which they were grounded.

Fourth, if, however, attending to the ‘ascetic’ grounding of the rivalenlightenments reveals their theological dimensions, then it simultane-ously holds the key to understanding their secularising roles. This is par-ticularly the case for civil philosophy. Through its voluntarist–theologicalexclusion of transcendent intellection from the domains of ethics, poli-tics, and jurisprudence, Pufendorfian natural law effected a profound‘detranscendentalising’ of civil governance. For this allowed politics andthe state to be conceived solely in terms of the worldly preservation of abeing with man’s ‘empirical’ (social but vicious) nature, to the exclusionof all concern with his morality and salvation (Tully ). We havealready indicated that in this profound reconstruction of practicalphilosophy, the civil philosophers were the bearers not of a general phil-osophical rationalisation of society, but of the specific kinds of secular-isation effected by political science and political jurisprudence (Heckel; Kriegel ). In this regard their kind of ‘secularisation’ differeddecisively from that of the metaphysical philosophers. For, rather thanrestricting religion to the private sphere in order to effect the desacral-isation of politics, Leibniz, Wolff, and Kant all attempted to provide asecular equivalent for religion – in the form of their own natural theol-ogies – through which they hoped to provide a moral basis for a resac-ralised state. Shocked by the central political construct of the earlymodern civil sciences – the secular security state – the metaphysicianssought to preserve their conception of a world still governed by the

Introduction

transcendent justice of the heavenly city. They did so by refurbishing alongstanding Christian conception of political order – the figure of thechurch as the ‘kingdom of God on earth’ – thereby initiating a power-ful anti-political, anti-juridical theory of ‘society’.

Fifth, we are now in a position to appreciate the key role played by thediscipline of natural law (Jus naturae, Naturrecht) in organising the conflictbetween civil and metaphysical philosophy. As a sub-branch of theology– treating of man’s natural knowledge of the moral laws inscribed inhuman nature by the creator – natural law reached back to the greatscholastic systems, yet had been refurbished by the early modern Jesuits,Vitoria and Suárez, as part of the ‘second scholasticism’ (Haakonssen, –). In the neoscholastic form imposed on it by Suárez, naturallaw retained most of its core Thomist features, in particular the concep-tion of rights as arising from subjective moral capacities (man’s ‘rationaland social being’) whose teleological completion forms the purpose ofcivil laws and the basis of political sovereignty (Tierney , –). Inthus treating civil rule as if it were grounded in a higher moral order,neoscholastic natural law was perfectly suited to the political–theologi-cal conception of society as church, providing the basis, for example, ofSuárez’s defence of the Pope’s power to determine the heretical statusof Protestant princes. It was precisely this political–theological role ofneoscholastic natural law that led Hobbes, Grotius, and Pufendorf totransform it from within. By replacing the Aristotelian anthropology ofman’s rational and social being with an Epicurean conception of manas a passion-driven self-destructive being, and by using a voluntaristtheology to exclude theo-rational conceptions of justice from the civildomain, the civil philosophers literally (Hobbes) or in effect (Pufendorf)identified natural law with the commands of the civil sovereign(Wyduckel ). Moreover, they did so not just in order to immuniseProtestant princes against religious subversion by political Catholicism,but, more importantly, to allow the state to float free of all religiousclaims on its civil authority (Döring b). It was not only Catholicpolitical theologians who therefore attacked the natural law ofPufendorf and his follower Thomasius. As we have seen, Pufendorf ’sdetranscendentalised natural law provoked heresy accusations fromLutheran theologians such as Alberti, who continued to elaborate neo-scholastic versions, not least to defend the civil powers of the churchagainst the fundamental attacks of Hobbes and Pufendorf (Palladini). As a result, seventeenth-century German universities provided thebattle-ground for two ‘modern’ doctrines of natural law: the ‘civil’

Introduction

natural law of Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, and Thomasius; and the‘Christian’ natural law of Althusius, Alberti, Prasch, Veltheim, Placcius,Rachel, and, most famously (restrospectively), Leibniz, who attacked thecivil philosophers from the high ground of Protestant scholasticism(Schneider ). This ‘intellectual civil war’ provides one of the centralinstances of the conflict between the two enlightenments.

Finally, we are in a position to observe that if the rival enlightenmentswere not competing theories evolving towards their Kantian Aufhebung,that is because they were in fact competing ways of configuring the pow-erful religious and political forces that converged on the early modernuniversity. Civil philosophy, we have noted, was not so much a philo-sophical doctrine as a series of attempts to provide a small group ofcivil sciences – political jurisprudence (Staatsrecht and Staatskirchenrecht),‘Bodinian’ sovereignty doctrine, civil law – with a configuration suited tothe formation of a ‘juristic civic consciousness’. For its part, universitymetaphysics may be regarded as a series of attempts to configure alargely different group of academic disciplines – theology, Roman law,logic, ethics – in accordance with the Christian metaphysical view of theworld as a unity arising from its (divine) intellection; that is, to provide aconfiguration suited to the formation of a ‘metaphysical supra-civic con-sciousness’. In each case the cultivation of a specific academic ethos wascentral to the undertaking. Through the metaphysical anthropology ofhomo duplex – that permitted them to explicate the Christian mysteriesand reveal the pure concepts of morality and justice underlying the civilorder – the university metaphysicians cultivated a particular intellectualpurity and prestige. On this basis, they claimed the authority to limit thegovernance of the earthly city in accordance with the laws of its divinearchetype, thereby advancing the interests of the academic–clericalestate. The civil philosophers cultivated a different ethos in accordancewith divergent ends. Through its anti-metaphysical voluntarism andEpicurean anthropology, civil natural law enabled its bearers to separ-ate their own deepest religious and moral convictions from the formula-tion of laws aimed solely at civil security. It was thus instrumental ingrounding the new doctrines of territorial sovereignty and desacralisedpolitics in a specific intellectual deportment, one characterised byprivate piety and public acceptance of the civil sovereign’s politicalsupremacy.

If, therefore, metaphysical and civil philosophy came into profoundconflict in early modern Germany – especially on the terrain of naturallaw – this was not because they represented reciprocally deficient epis-

Introduction

temologies or ethics, soon to be reconciled and transcended in Kantiancritical philosophy. Rather, it was because they represented divergentcultures for configuring the relations between religious and civil govern-ance. Each was grounded in a powerful ascetic philosophy, and each wasdedicated to using this philosophy to place certain academic sciences atthe disposal of the state – but in very different ways and in accordancewith fundamentally different conceptions of politics.

The studies of Leibniz and Pufendorf, Thomasius and Kant in Part of our essay are not therefore intended as a narrative history of earlymodern philosophy, governed by the theme of the progressive discoveryof the laws of human reason or the autonomy of the moral subject.Rather, they are to be viewed as a series of profiles outlining the mannerin which these figures attempted to impose either a civil or a metaphys-ical signature on a specific array of academic sciences, each in accor-dance with a distinctive ethos, and as part of larger attempts toreconfigure early modern Germany’s religious and political culture.Before embarking on these particular studies, however, we require anoverview of the role of metaphysical and civil philosophy in the earlymodern German university, which is the task of Part of this book.

Introduction

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Rival enlightenments

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University metaphysics

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We have suggested that, rather than representing the path taken byhuman reason’s recovery of its own transcendental conditions, Germanuniversity metaphysics was itself polemically enmeshed in the religiousand political conflicts of the early modern period. This chapter providesan overview of this approach to the history of German university meta-physics. We argue that in its anthropology and cosmology Schulmetaphysikgave shape not to a universal rational being, but to a particular kind ofmoral personage. Through his self-purifying recovery of the pure con-cepts of things, this personage was groomed for the exercise of a quasi-sacral power in the civil domain. This spiritual grooming, carried out inthe teaching of metaphysics itself, created the prestige and authorityrequired to judge civil affairs in accordance with transcendent concepts– in particular, the concepts of man’s rational being and the natural lawsrequired for its realisation.

One of our central concerns will be to sketch a genealogy for theprestige of enlightenment metaphysics by showing its indebtednessto seventeenth-century Protestant Schulmetaphysik. The ‘enlightenment’defence of the intelligible conditions of empirical experience, we argue,may be regarded as an historical improvisation on the neoscholasticdefence of the divine intellection of the supersensible forms and sub-stances. This lays the groundwork for our non-standard approach to themetaphysical philosophy of Leibniz, Wolff, and Kant in Part . For here,rather than viewing them as moving ever closer to the recovery ofhuman subjectivity’s transcendent(al) conditions, we treat the enlighten-ment metaphysicians as exponents of a quasi-religious ethos in whichthis recovery is the objective of a spiritual exercise.

Needless to say, while the relation between enlightenment metaphys-ics and seventeenth-century Schulmetaphysik remains under-researched, ithas not gone unnoticed. With very few exceptions, however, this relation

is discussed in terms of metaphysics throwing off its theological past. Thisview of enlightenment metaphysics as the rational subsumption of itstheological predecessor can take a negative or positive form. Beck, forexample, treats the neoscholastic theory of being as too scholastic anddogmatic – as insufficiently ‘epistemological’ – to function as a vehicle forautonomous human reason, hence as destined to be eclipsed by theemergence of enlightenment epistemology (Beck , –). Petersenand Wundt, however, regard seventeenth-century Schulmetaphysik asplaying a key role in the emergence of enlightenment metaphysics,through the manner in which it preserved the doctrine of transcendentrational being against the threats of English empiricism and GermanPietism (Petersen ; Wundt ; Wundt ). In both cases, however,enlightenment metaphysics is viewed as the rational transcendence of itstheological predecessor – either as the emancipator of philosophy fromtheology, or as the means of their harmonisation in a rational theory oftranscendent being. In other words, in both cases the history of meta-physics is seen in terms of the progressive rationalisation of humanreason’s (initially theological) pursuit of its transcendent(al) conditions.

Before discussing this view in a little more detail, we may observe thatthere are prima facie reasons for thinking that the history of metaphys-ics is far more turbulent – far more deeply enmeshed in the history ofreligious and political conflict – than such an account can allow. Herethe crucial thing to observe is that with the onset of Lutheran confes-sionalisation (‘the Reformation’), university metaphysics was targeted forelimination. Pointers to this anti-metaphysical campaign can be foundin Luther’s Disputation Against Scholastic Theology of , where we find hiswholesale rejection of the Aristotelian way:

It is false to state that the will can by nature conform to a correct precept. Thisis said in opposition to Scotus and Gabriel . . .

Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace. This inopposition to the scholastics . . .

It is an error to say that no man can become a theologian without Aristotle.Indeed, no one can become a theologian unless he becomes one without

Aristotle.In vain does one fashion a logic of faith, a substitution brought about without

regard for limit and measure. This in opposition to the new dialecticians.(Luther , , )

Luther’s hostility was driven in part by the key role that Scotist–Aristotelian university metaphysics had played in defining and defend-ing Catholic orthodoxy against the first waves of reform (Shank ).

University metaphysics

But it was also driven by his Occamite repudiation of the ‘rationalist’character of this metaphysics – that is, of its claims to provide naturalknowledge of the Christian mysteries via transcendent conceptscommon to God and man. From Luther’s voluntarist perspective, theThomist and Scotist programmes – teaching that man could accede toknowledge and love of God through cultivation of a quasi-divine (meta-physical) reason – were completely inimical to the true grounding ofreligion in a biblically based faith.

Taken to its conclusion, Luther’s rejection of the metaphysical recon-ciliation of reason and faith, philosophy and theology, resulted in the‘two truths’ doctrine. In elaborating this doctrine in his De Usu etApplicatione Notionum Logicorum ad Res Theologicus (On the Use and Applicationof Logical Concepts in Relation to Theological Matters, ), Daniel Hofmannargues that philosophy and theology give rise to irreconcilably differentkinds of truth, on the basis of the difference between the ‘natural’(corrupt) and ‘regenerate’ conditions of the intellect that accedes totruth. This doctrine is so hostile to the metaphysical reconciliation ofphilosophy and theology that even modern metaphysicians attack it onsight: ‘Common to all the scholastic metaphysicians was the rejection ofa two-fold truth – in fact, the metaphysical movement arose to meet thetheological irrationalism enshrined in this ancient bugbear’ (Beck ,). As soon, however, as we reinstate the specific anthropology under-pinning Luther’s and Hofmann’s position – that is, the Occamite anthro-pology of fallen man’s corrupted intellect and his consequent incapacityfor acceding to transcendent ideas – then the true character of the ‘twotruths’ doctrine becomes apparent. In restricting knowledge of theolog-ical truth to an intellect regenerated through faith and grace, Hofmannwas not irrationally rejecting philosophy. Rather he was attempting toexclude philosophers (university metaphysicians) from the role of medi-ating the Christian mysteries, treating their rationalist pursuit of salva-tion through ascent to transcendent knowledge as incompatible with themode of acceding to salvation through biblical faith (Schorn-Schütte). In other words, the battle over the ‘two truths’ doctrine is symp-tomatic not of the role of metaphysics in the emancipation of reasonfrom religion, but of the quasi-religious role of metaphysics itself; thatis, of its role as a mode of spiritual formation in competition with thevoluntarist and fideist one that was central to early Lutheran confession-alism (Sparn ).

This is the historical light in which we should view the exclusion ofmetaphysics from the curricula of Protestant universities in the first

Introduction

decades of the sixteenth century. The University of Wittenberg ()proved to be the model in this regard, with the old scholastic cur-riculum grounded in logic and metaphysics being replaced by theMelanchthonian curriculum centred on rhetoric, ethics, natural law,biblical exegesis and the Aristotelian sciences (Kusukawa ). Far fromrepresenting an irrational cul-de-sac, Wittenberg was indicative of anew and far-reaching alliance between the state-building aspirations ofterritorial princes and the confessionalising objectives of religious acti-vists (Heinrich ). In fact, Wittenberg broke with the old form of theuniversity – that of an urban corporation under Imperial and Papalpatent. Instead, it drew its legal form and funding from the territorialstate, and its governance from a council of state officials and religiousreformers – including Luther, Jonas, Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen(Scheible ). In this setting, Melanchthon’s model curriculum wasrequired to fulfil the same key functions as its scholastic predecessor – toprovide the religious and political elite with a suitably orthodox intellec-tual comportment (Kaufmann , –). Melanchthon, however,could not use the metaphysics of transcendent–rational being as hismeans of harmonising the theological and philosophical sciences into asingle formative curriculum. Instead, as Kusukawa has shown, he har-nessed the (Aristotelian) natural sciences themselves to this end, teach-ing them as the key to reading the signs of God’s ordering presence innature, and thereby maintaining the normative unity of the Christianacademic curriculum (Kusukawa ).

It is all the more remarkable therefore that during the closing decadeof the sixteenth century and the opening one of the seventeenth, thebanished figure of the metaphysician suddenly reappeared in the philos-ophy and theology faculties of the Protestant academy. In the Lutheranuniversities we can mention Daniel Cramer (Wittenberg, ),Cornelius Martini (Helmstedt, ), Henning Arnisaeus (Helmstedt,), Jacob Martini (Wittenberg, ), Johann Gerhard (Jena, ),Balthasar Meisner (Wittenberg, ), and Christoph Scheibler (Gießen,). In the Calvinist world the most prominent of the new metaphysi-cians were Rudolf Goclenius (Marburg, ), BartholomaeusKeckermann (Heidelberg, ), Johann Alsted (Herborn, ), andClemens Timpler (Heidelberg and Steinfurt, ) (Sparn , ;Wundt ). Considering our larger concerns, the return of a full-blooded metaphysics to Protestant universities from the final decade ofthe sixteenth century presents us with an important historical–intellec-tual problem. Given that the central tasks of philosophia Christiana could,

University metaphysics

apparently, be fulfilled by a non-metaphysical scholasticism, what wasdriving the return of metaphysics to the Protestant academy almost acentury after Luther and Melanchthon had shown it the door? As weshall see, the answer to this question holds the key to understanding therelation between seventeenth-century Schulmetaphysik and its enlighten-ment successor.

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For a long time the standard answer to this question was Petersen’s(Petersen ). Identifying metaphysics with ‘Aristotelianism’, Petersentreats its expulsion from the Protestant academy as a religious aberrationthat would be reversed through human reason’s natural desire touncover the transcendent–rational grounds of the empirical world. Thisis the desire that Petersen sees behind the return of ProtestantSchulmetaphysik and as ultimately finding its full satisfaction in Leibniz’smetaphysical rationalism. In short, in ignoring the religious and politi-cal forces driving the banishment of metaphysics from the Protestantcurriculum, and in presuming that its return represents the resumptionof reason’s pursuit of its own transcendent conditions, Petersen’saccount is a typical instance of the history of metaphysics as the ratio-nal subsumption of theology.

We can identify two versions of this history. According to the first,metaphysics leads to the rational preservation of religious belief in theform of Kant’s recovery of the transcendental conditions of humanexperience and morality. Wundt and Beck offer classic histories of meta-physics written in these terms. While they differ over whether it isLutheranism or Calvinism that contains the germs of a rational future,and while they disagree over whether reason is best served by metaphys-ics or epistemology, both of them treat Kant’s ‘critical’ metaphysics aspreserving man’s longing for the transcendent in a rational form (Beck, –; Wundt , –). Similarly, Schmidt-Biggemannidentifies two forms in which seventeenth-century metaphysics (naturaltheology) preserved man’s desire for the transcendent against theologi-cal dogmatism and juridical positivism. The first of these is the neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of Suárez, whose reduction of religiousstatements to a common language of ‘being’ made it possible to treat‘Christ’s presence in the sacrament or . . . the incarnation of Christ, asproblems of logic and metaphysics and in this way to show the scientific

Metaphysics as the subsumption of theology

character of theology and its convergence with nature and reason’(Schmidt-Biggemann , ). The second is the Hermetic–Platonicmetaphysics of the neo-Platonists, which locates the intelligibility ofhistory in divinely intelligised ‘perfections’ (transcendent essences ofthings). This, Schmidt-Biggemann argues, would eventually bear fruit inLeibniz’s grounding of natural law in ‘trans-religious and trans-confes-sional’ rational concepts of justice, and in Kant’s final recovery of ‘theautonomy of reason as a legal principle’ (). In characterising the cul-mination of seventeenth-century metaphysics in this manner, Schmidt-Biggemann ignores both the polemical construction of Leibniz’stranscendent conception of natural law – its vehement opposition toPufendorf ’s political conception – and the degree to which this construc-tion depended on the explicitly confessional doctrines of the Lutherannatural jurists and political theologians (Schneider ). We will returnto this set of issues in Chapter .

According to the second version of this historiography, ProtestantSchulmetaphysik is less the seed-bed of Kantian epistemology and more aby-product of a truly fundamental reconciliation of theology and philos-ophy: namely, that undertaken by the Jesuit metaphysician FranciscoSuárez (–) at the advent of the ‘second scholasticism’. Here,Suárez’s metaphysics of ‘intelligible being’ – the sphere of timelesslogical substances existing prior to their materialisation as things – ismade central to the harmonisation of theology and philosophy, hence tothe self-development of human reason. Written under Catholic auspices,this history of early modern metaphysics brings out the (de facto)Protestant character of the Kantian one. In his early attempt to accountfor the success of ‘Jesuit metaphysics’ in Protestant universities,Eschweiler appeals to the centrality of Suárez’s ‘practical intellectual-ism’, and to his conception of the intelligible ground of empirical beingin particular. Scarcely mentioning the facts of intra- and extra-Protestantconfessional conflict, Eschweiler sees Suárez’s doctrine as answering theneed of Protestant academics for a unifying foundation for the academicsciences, so that the return of metaphysics is driven by a ‘need of thetime’ or Zeitgeist (Eschweiler , –). While paying more attentionthan Eschweiler to the circumstances of intra-Protestant confessionalconflict, Ernst Lewalter also ascribes the return of metaphysics to apurely intellectual dynamic, in fact arising from the tension between phi-losophy and theology. Lewalter thus depicts Protestant metaphysics asdivided between a philological–humanist wing (Arnisaeus, Helmstedt)and a formal onto-theological wing (Scheibler, Gießen), the latter being

University metaphysics

grounded in Suárez’s onto-theology of divine being and dedicated toreconstructing Aristotle for the purposes of confessional theology(Lewalter , –, ). He then presents Cornelius Martini(Helmstedt) as resolving this tension, by developing a metaphysics inwhich God is treated as part of ontology (rather than as its foundation),but in which natural theology is not allowed to replace revealed. Theground of this reconciliation, however, remains the theory of intelligiblebeing, which Lewalter regards as driving German metaphysics fromLeibniz through Wolff to Kant and the idealists (–).

The most influential rendering of this version of the history of meta-physics, however, is Charles Lohr’s. Lohr posits the existence of twoforms of metaphysics. On the one hand there is the neo-Platonic ‘scienceof God’ – Lull, Nicholas of Cusa, the Florentine Platonists. This meta-physics pursues the unity of philosophy and theology by treating divineintellection of the forms as the goal of a practice of philosophical con-templation in which even the unconsecrated may participate (Lohr ,–). Opposed to this is the Thomistic, scholastic-Aristotelian‘science of being’, whose subordination of philosophical to revealedknowledge of God Lohr regards as dictated by clericalism and the hier-archical nature of medieval church and society (, ). By presentingboth versions of metaphysics as under threat from a fideistic nominal-ism and an empiricist (Averroistic) version of Aristotelianism, Lohr’saccount organises itself around the imperative of a fundamental recon-ciliation of the philosophical science of God and the theological scienceof being: ‘An approach was needed which avoided the fideism of thenominalists, the secularism of the Averroists and the clericalism behindthe Christian Aristotelianism of the Thomists’ ().

Lohr regards Duns Scotus as taking the decisive step along this path,by reconstructing the notion of ‘infinite immaterial being’ (God) interms of the non-contradictory intelligising of possible things. For, indoing so, Scotus was able to free metaphysics from Aristotle’s physicswhile simultaneously maintaining the subordination of the physicalworld to the domain of transcendent being, which now appeared as thisworld’s intelligible or rational grounds (–). Suárez is then describedas completing Scotus’ reconciliation of philosophy and theology, whichhe does by superimposing the distinction between uncreated and createdbeing on Scotus’ pairing of infinite and finite being. This allowed Suárezto distinguish ‘real’ being, as the pure concepts or intelligibilia intelligisedby God, from ‘actual’ being, as the empirical things whose existence waswholly dependent on God’s decision to realise some of the intelligibles

Metaphysics as the subsumption of theology

(). Lohr thus regards Suárez as harmonising philosophy and theology– and outflanking the disintegrative forces of empiricism and fideism –through his new metaphysical construction of man and the world asfinite beings bearing infinite principles of intelligibility.

Placing it in this context, Lohr treats the return of metaphysics toGermany’s Protestant universities as a theatre for a smaller version ofthe same intellectual–historical drama. The main difference in theGerman case is that Reformation voluntarism and fideism intensifiedthe threats to Christian metaphysics arising from secular ‘medicalempiricism’. These threats were nonetheless countered in the familiarway, through the adaptation of Suárez’s new theory of intelligible beingto German circumstances:

Suárez’ work was well suited to the purposes of the Lutheran thinkers. Heunderstood metaphysics as a general science of being and rejected the idea ofan independent natural theology. He provided the philosophical basis for thetreatment of the Incarnation. Most importantly, he provided a foundation fora refutation of the theory of double truth proposed by some extremist theolo-gians. Suárez’ Disputationes describe a confessionally neutral, possible world towhich all those who accepted the doctrine of creation could subscribe. (Lohr, –)

Despite several significant differences therefore – focused in the gapbetween Jesuit metaphysics and Kantian epistemology – these two ver-sions of the history of metaphysics share a common core. Above all, bylocating the reconciliation of theology and philosophy in the theory ofintelligible being, both versions equate metaphysics with human reason’srecovery of its transcendent(al) foundations. It is on this basis that theycan treat the return of metaphysics to the Protestant academy as theresumption of reason’s journey of self-discovery. This is the journey thatwould culminate in the subsumption of theology within a philosophicalknowledge of the ‘rational’ (intelligible) grounds of the empirical world.From here arose a ‘confessionally neutral’ language for addressing thetranscendent-rational intellect housed in the human subject, whichwould be spoken – albeit in different dialects – by Leibniz, Wolff, andKant.

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We can indicate the limitations of this historiographic consensus, andoutline an alternative genealogy for university metaphysics, by making

University metaphysics

four observations. We can begin by observing that the return of meta-physics was driven more by the needs of confessional religion than bythe destiny of reason. Salomon Geßner’s edition of Johann Versor’sEpitome Metaphysicae Aristotelicae () – published at Wittenberg in – gives symptomatic expression to these needs. After complaining aboutthe rude and ignorant students emerging from Melanchthon’s curricu-lum, Geßner approaches his central concerns by reminding his readersthat the ‘Calviniani’ have used the slogan finitum non est capax infiniti – thefinite cannot contain the infinite – in order to attack the Lutheranaccount of the communication of properties (communicatio idiomata)between Christ’s human and divine natures. If the Lutheran doctrine ofthe union of finite and infinite being is to be clarified and defended, saysGeßner, then Lutheran universities must re-embrace the discipline ofmetaphysics. He continues:

For how disgracefully today many stumble or falter when they have to speakabout principles, about causes, about the elements of something, about thenature of something, about something such as unity, being and essence, iden-tity and difference, opposition, ground and consequence, possibility and reality,about completion, about the relation of whole and parts, about the truth anderror of something or about necessity and contingency and similar questions,whether in theology or in other disciplines – this we experience daily, with pain.(Geßner in Lewalter , )

Geßner’s complaint testifies to the central force that was driving thereturn of metaphysics to the Protestant universities: namely, the mannerin which the conflict between the rival confessions was being played outin the spiritual formation of their intellectual elites. After a period of rel-atively peaceful coexistence in the first half of the sixteenth century, thesecond half was marked by an intensification of the process of confes-sionalisation in various German territories, principalities, and cities. Bythe beginning of the seventeenth century the alliance of territorialprinces and confessional theologians had given rise to archipelagoes ofreligiously opposed, mutually hostile states (Schilling ). The fact thatGeßner’s demand for the return of the theory of being was issued at theheight of the confessional period, from the academic headquarters ofLutheran orthodoxy, leads us to suspect that the characteristic of meta-physics most responsible for its second coming was the spiritual author-ity that it bestowed on academic philosophers and theologians. If theCalvinist attack on the union of human and divine being was to berepulsed, and if the poorly formed ‘Melanchthonian’ students were tobe transformed into a philosophically literate religious intelligentsia

The return of metaphysics

capable of mounting such defences, then they would have to be trainedin the only discipline that permitted them to accede to the exalteddomain where human and divine being overlapped: metaphysics.

This observation of the confessional–theological character of Protes-tant Schulmetaphysik provides the appropriate context in which to intro-duce Walter Sparn’s remarkable Wiederkehr der Metaphysik: Die ontologischeFrage in der lutherischen Theologie des frühen . Jahrhunderts (The Return ofMetaphysics: The Ontological Question in the Lutheran Theology of the Early th

Century), to which I am indebted throughout this section. Sparn’s over-turning of all those histories of metaphysics written in terms of the phil-osophical subsumption of theology hinges on a single fundamentalreorientation. Rather than accepting it as the goal of an emancipatoryhistory of philosophy, Sparn argues that the reconciliation of philoso-phy and theology in university metaphysics was in fact a cultural taskimposed by academic theology itself, in accordance with theologicalends, and using theological means (Sparn , –).

Sparn shows that in early seventeenth-century universities the imper-ative to reconcile philosophy and theology was formulated in theologi-cal rather than philosophical terms (, –). Here it was argued thatthe disciplines must agree because of the singularity of truth, which isgrounded in the self-identity of things created by a single God. This viewwas also reflected in the ‘two books’ topos – the book of nature and theholy book – whose interpretations must agree because they were writtenby the same divine hand, which makes natural and revealed knowledgeinto alternative ways of knowing God in his works. In fact, Sparn argues,the very distinction between natural and revealed knowledge is a theo-logical construct. For it was used to impose a highly abstract category of‘philosophy’ on a wide range of academic sciences – that is, all the sci-ences deemed grounded in the unaided or natural use of man’s faculties– with a view to subordinating them to the one revealed science,theology.

The consequences of formulating the imperative to reconcile ‘philos-ophy’ and theology in theological terms can be seen in the doctrineemployed to handle any conflicts arising between them. Such conflictswere to be treated as indicative of a personal failing in the philosopher– as symptomatic in fact of the corruption and impairment of all post-lapsarian uses of the natural faculties – hence as requiring correctionthrough revealed truths: ‘In this way, despite the principled separationof its scientific domain from that of philosophy, theology charged thephilosopher – in the role of the Christian philosopher – with responsibil-

University metaphysics

ity for proving philosophically the non-contradictory character of thelimitation of philosophical principles demanded by theology’ (, ).In short, as the academic discipline designed to maintain agreementbetween philosophy and theology, the objective of early-seventeenth-century metaphysics was not to rationalise theology but to keep poten-tially secular (‘empiricist’) knowledges and their subjects within the orbitof Christian academic culture. In continuing to see metaphysics as theharmonisation of philosophy and theology, its modern historians mayremain more indebted to this objective than they realise.

Our second observation is that, as a para-theological discipline dedi-cated to configuring academic sciences in accordance with Christianculture, university metaphysics was itself subject to profound confes-sional division. We can gain some insight into the character of this divi-sion through a text of Christoph Scheibler. Scheibler belonged to theGießen school of Lutheran theology, characterised by the strong uptakeof Suárez’s theory of intelligible being – in fact he was tagged the‘Protestant Suárez’. He should therefore be an exponent of Lohr’s ‘con-fessionally neutral’ metaphysics. This is not, however, the face weencounter in Scheibler’s Foreword to his Opus Metaphysicum of . Inthe course of dedicating his work to count Ludwig of Hessen-Darmstadt, Scheibler provides an epitome of his arguments for thenecessity of metaphysics, which is worth quoting in full:

In any case, it will be recalled that Boethius tells how at the Nicenian Councileveryone said that in Christ there are two natures and one person, but no-oneknew what this one ‘person’ was. And from this ignorance regarding theconcept of person it then came about that some said it was the three persons ofthe divinity while others would not say this. Hence it is clearly very necessarythat metaphysics contain a doctrine in which it explained what a suppositum orpersona generally is.

Equally, the wise will have often inquired into the differentiation of the threepersons of the Godhead. Damascenus said they differed only in relation to our[human] knowledge; others responded that they were really different. Whatdoes it mean though: to differ ‘in relation to our knowledge’ (ratione) or ‘really’(realiter)? Again, one can only discover this through metaphysics.

If, further, divine providence comes into consideration then often with itcome the expressions ‘necessity’ and ‘actuality’ (contingentia). If, though, themeaning of these expressions is not correctly recognised, then not only the infal-libility of divine foreknowledge, but also the freedom and actuality of humandecisions, can only be inadequately analysed.

In the doctrine of the sacraments ‘sign’ is spoken about often enough. Fromwhence though should one know what a ‘sign’ (signum) is, if not from metaphys-ics? Once this is known though then all the stupidities of the Calvinists collapse

The return of metaphysics

together; because the sacraments are not, as the Calvinists teach, ‘bare tokens’(signa nuda) but have a signification (significant). Hence therefore when, in relationto the eucharistic bread and body of the Lord, sign (signum) is spoken of, one isto understand by this that the body of the Lord is present (while they think thathe is only in heaven).

In the conflicts with the Socinians (Photiniani) over the Trinity, argumentsmust often be developed from the nature of such things as cause, infinity, indi-vidual and universal, simple and composite. Only metaphysics though explainswhat all these are.

Further, after Luther had restored the priesthood to its original condition, thechurch was brought into grave tumult through the opinion of Flacius Illyricus,who claimed that original sin is the substance of human nature and not just anaccidental attachment. The error arose from the fact that Flacius knew nothingof the details comprehended in [the expression] ‘accidental attachment’ (accid-ens). (Scheibler in Lewalter , –)

Despite the assurances of modern historians regarding the confes-sional neutrality of Suárez’s doctrine of intelligible being, we find thatthis doctrine was itself caught up in bitter and often bloody theologicalconflict. Scheibler’s view is that a metaphysics of intelligible being is nec-essary because only those possessing the true (Lutheran) version of it willbe able to destroy the false Calvinist doctrines regarding the union ofChrist’s two natures, the Trinity, predestination, the mode of Christ’spresence in the eucharistic host, and the character of original sin.Rather than emerging as a confessionally neutral way of addressing thedomain of intelligible being, it would appear that the language of meta-physics was being forged in accordance with rival theological viewpoints.

In his discussion of the conflict between Lutheran and Calvinist meta-physics, Sparn treats them as two opposed ways of configuring the rela-tion between infinite intelligible being and finite human being,representing in fact two opposed ways of relating theology and philoso-phy. For Sparn, ‘Lutheran metaphysics’ – which he expounds largelythrough the works of Balthasar Meisner and Jacob Martini ofWittenberg – is characterised by a particular disposition of its ‘general’and ‘special’ parts (Sparn , –). General metaphysics, whichAbraham Calov named Ontologia in , deals with being in general,including divine being. Special metaphysics deals with the three kinds ofbeing – divine, cosmic, and human – eventually giving rise to the threesub-disciplines of ‘rational’ theology, cosmology, and anthropology. Thedistinctiveness of Meisner’s and Martini’s Lutheran construction ofgeneral metaphysics lies in their stress on the unbridgeable gulf betweenGod’s radically autarkic infinite being and man’s radically dependent

University metaphysics

finite being. This is a gulf so great that it cannot even be spanned byhuman concepts, which means that God can be understood as a ‘being’or ‘substance’ only in an analogical sense (analogia entis). Here, in the ana-logical application of philosophical concepts to God we find a charac-teristic expression of the joining of philosophical and theologicalperspectives, and Sparn comments that: ‘In consciousness of the conver-gence of these perspectives, metaphysics assumed not only the terminol-ogy of creation doctrine but also the attitude of pietas’ ().

The Lutheran construction of general metaphysics or ontology thusmeant that divine being could only be analogically included underhuman concepts. But, conversely, it also meant that to the extent thatGod was known in ontology then he appeared in a purely (Aristotelian)‘scientific’ manner – as the physical cause of motion – his divine natureremaining inscrutable to ‘natural’ philosophy. Meisner’s and Martini’srefusal to allow natural knowledge of the divine nature in ontology orgeneral metaphysics is not, as Beck has argued, a symptom of Lutherananti-intellectualism (Beck , ). Rather, it indicates that theyreserved this knowledge for the domain of special metaphysics. Here itwould occur not through natural philosophical means, but via the medi-ation of the gulf between the human and the divine that only Christiantheology may perform – in fact via the figure of Christ, whose twonatures form the nexus between divine and human being (Sparn ,–). Sparn thus characterises Lutheran metaphysics as consisting ofa ‘dualist’ or ‘analogical’ general part – where the conflict between logicand Christology could be treated as symptomatic of the gulf betweenhuman and divine understanding – and a ‘mediational’ special part,where this conflict would be overcome not in philosophy but via a meta-physical theology and sacramental ‘actions’ (–).

Despite the fact that he discusses it largely as a foil, Sparn argues thatthe ‘Calvinist metaphysics’ developed by Keckermann, Timpler, andAlsted took a very different form to the Lutheran. According to Sparn,by drawing on a ‘monistic’ Platonic conception of the intelligibility ofdivine being, this metaphysics denied any absolute gulf between humanand divine being (, –). In treating creation in terms of thedivine being’s intellection of the essences, Calvinist metaphysics couldview humans as participating in the divine intellection of the universe ina ‘natural’ or philosophical manner. This was made possible by theirresidual possession of an uncorrupted spark of the divine intellect – their‘rational being’ – which was regarded as the source of man’s imago Deior God-likeness (–). For Calvinist metaphysicians, therefore,

The return of metaphysics

general metaphysics or ontology was also natural (philosophical) theol-ogy – approximating in fact to the ‘rational’ theory of intelligible beingthat modern historians identify with metaphysics as such. Hence, Sparnargues, rather than reserving knowledge of the divine nature forChristian theology, Calvinist metaphysics began to treat philosophy itselfas a kind of theology (–). It taught that the metaphysician himselfcould rise to a quasi-sacral knowledge of God. This would take placethrough such ‘Platonic’ practices as anamnesis – the contemplative‘remembering’ of the divine mind’s continuous ‘sub-conscious’ thinkingof the forms of things; or via the contemplative ascent from empiricalappearances of things to the pure intellection of their forms or intelli-gences. Through these practices ‘Calvinist metaphysics’ prepared theground for enlightenment ‘rationalism’.

Our third observation concerns the manner in which a philosophicaltheology (or theological philosophy) emerged from the hybridising ofChristian mysteries and philosophical concepts in metaphysics. If theway in which Schulmetaphysik formulated the relation between philosophyand theology was determined by conflicting theologies and ecclesiolo-gies, then this refurbished metaphysics simultaneously provided theseconflicting theologies and ecclesiologies with ‘philosophical’ articulationand armoury. From this reciprocity between its theological and philo-sophical organs, university metaphysics gave birth to a philosophicaltheology. Here, the ‘rational’ explication of the Christian mysteries wasaccompanied by a profound theological investment of philosophicalconcepts and doctrines, such that philosophical theology was alwaystheological philosophy. This process took place through the continuouselaboration of a series of conflicting theological–philosophical doctrines– in the crucial areas of Christology and soteriology – as the rival con-fessions battled to delineate Protestant orthodoxy and to groom its intel-lectual bearers in the university. The crucial forms of these doctrines areclearly visible in Scheibler’s list. What is not so clear is the degree towhich the early-seventeenth-century metaphysical explications of theChristian mysteries would flow into the philosophical theologies of theenlightenment rationalists. In order to prepare the ground for our sub-sequent discussion of this question, we shall draw on Sparn for three keyinstances.

We have already mentioned the first of these, the rival metaphysicalelaborations of the doctrine of Christ’s two natures and one person.This doctrine was central to all the Christian confessions; for it wasthrough the sacramental union of Christ’s human and divine natures

University metaphysics

that the churches could offer mediation and redemption to the faithful,making the figure of Christ into such an intense object of worship andspeculation (Baur ). University metaphysics entered the domain ofChristology in order to reconcile a conflict with ‘Paduan’ logic. Thisarose because Christ’s saving office requires the transfer of essentialproperties between his two natures (communicatio idiomata), which entailsthe a-logical doctrine that a single supposite or ‘person’ could be thebearer of two conflicting sets of defining properties or ‘natures’. Sparn’serudite discussion of this problem focuses on the conflicting solutionsproposed by Lutheran and Calvinist metaphysicians, in accordance withtheir rival Christologies (Sparn , –). Briefly, Lutheran metaphy-sicians such as Meisner insisted that Christ’s natures should be under-stood as two distinct substances at the ‘philosophical’ level in order toposit their ‘perichoretic’ union – involving the complete reciprocalexchange of divine and human properties – in the ‘concrete’ perfor-mances of the incarnation and eucharist. Conversely, Calvinist meta-physicians taught that Christ’s true substance was his divine nature orLogos. This meant that he assumed his human nature ‘accidentally’ forthe purposes of its regeneration – a solution more in keeping with thestandard logic of substances and defining properties.

For our present purposes, however, it is not the differences betweenthe rival metaphysical Christologies that matter, but the manner inwhich they both give rise to a moral anthropology oriented to personalunity. For, in tying moral regeneration to the unification of the person’sdivine and human natures, these Christologies gave rise to a redempti-vist conception of personal unity that would flow directly into the meta-physical ethics of Leibniz and Kant. Sparn has thus argued that thecentral contours of Leibniz’s monadology – the relation between themonad’s active rational soul and the passive corporeal body to which itis attached – may be seen as a generalisation of the Lutheran metaphys-ical conception of Christ’s two natures (Sparn ). Even more point-edly, however, we shall see that Kant makes extensive use of the figureof Christ’s two natures and one person in order to give shape to his con-ception of moral regeneration (see .. below). In fact Kant superim-poses the Christological doctrine of Christ’s divine and human naturesonto the metaphysical doctrine of man’s noumenal and phenomenalnatures, thereby conceiving of moral renewal as a kind of secular spiri-tual rebirth taking place via philosophy within the person.

We find a similarly unsettling continuity between Christian and ‘ratio-nalist’ metaphysics in our second instance of doctrinal elaboration – that

The return of metaphysics

occasioned by conflicting theologies of Christ’s mode of presence in theeucharistic host. Here a longstanding problem – that of accounting forChrist’s simultaneous presence in a foreign substance at different timesand places – was exacerbated by the replacement of Aristotelian physicswith a new cosmology: the Galilean–Newtonian conception of the uni-verse as a set of spatio-temporal relations between physical bodies. In hisdiscussion of this issue, Sparn concentrates on the manner in whichLutheran metaphysicians defended their conception of Christ’s ‘realpresence’ in different places simultaneously – the so-called ‘ubiquity’doctrine – against the Calvinist conception of a merely ‘symbolic’ pres-ence in the host (, –). Meisner’s solution was to draw on pneu-matological and eschatological doctrines, in particular those associatedwith the ‘non-spatial’ presence of the body in the soul, and of glorifiedbodies in space during the time of the apocalypse. This enabled him todeclare that the property of filling space (extension) was ‘accidental’ forbodies rather than real, while simultaneously reconceiving ‘place’ in anon-spatial manner, via the notion of relations within a spiritual com-munity. He could thus defend the doctrines of real presence and ubiq-uity by appealing to the capacity of Christ’s glorified body to suspendthe accident of filling physical space, thereby being present everywherein the community of immaterial beings.

For our present concerns, the striking feature of this defence is themanner in which it gives rise to a doctrine that would be central toenlightenment metaphysics: namely, the doctrine of the ‘subjectivity’ ofspace and time (Beck , ). In order to maintain God’s real pres-ence in the physical universe – thereby preserving it as the locale forredemption – Meisner’s pneumatology and eschatology permitted himto treat the spatio-temporal localisation of physical bodies as ‘imagi-nary’. By this he meant that it arose from the manner in which their sub-stantial (immaterial) relations appeared to beings possessing man’ssensory apparatus. Leibniz’s metaphysical explication of trans-substan-tiation in his (posthumously titled) Systema Theologicum () shows howdirectly this conception passed into ‘rational’ philosophical theology. Forhere Leibniz dedicates his ‘metaphysical physics’ – his doctrine of unex-tended ‘point forces’ that give the appearance of occupying space due totheir impenetrability – to the same end as Meisner’s pneumatology andeschatology. He seeks, that is, to treat Christ’s occupancy of the euchar-ist host as the ‘accidental’ manifestation of his immaterial substance inthe spatio-temporal world (TS, –). Leibniz’s metaphysics of theeucharist – through which he hoped to restore the divided confessions to

University metaphysics

rational unity – may thus be regarded as an updating of the initialChristian–metaphysical attempts to preserve the redemptive potential ofthe universe against its Newtonian spatialisation (Fouke ). We maysuggest that Kant’s doctrine of the subjective character of space andtime – his conception of the Newtonian universe as the form in which anon-spatial community of intelligences appears to a creature with man’ssensibility – constitutes a similar act of preservation, as Wundt hasargued in detail (Wundt , –, –, –). Here we witness thesprouting of modern ‘anti-empiricist’ philosophies, dedicated to thetranscendent(al) conditions of experience, from their Christian–meta-physical seed-bed.

Our third and final instance of the elaboration of philosophical–theological doctrine takes place in the metaphysics of morality. Here theproblem confronting seventeenth-century Schulmetaphysik was not theclash between logic and Christology, or physics and cosmology, but thatbetween pagan ethics and Christian moral theology. Sparn argues thatthis problem was focused in discussions of sin and evil. If Aristotelianethics employed a purely negative conception of evil – as the ‘privative’failure to realise the ‘good’ or perfection contained in the entelechy ofall things – then Christian theology regarded evil quite differently: as apositive choice by originally sinful man to transgress God’s holy law(Sparn , –). Through its conception of original sin as thetranscendent predisposition to break divine law, the Christian concep-tion of ‘radical evil’ is opposed to all pagan (Stoic, Epicurean) concep-tions of a morally indifferent human nature; for these treat ethicalattributes as ‘imposed’ in accordance with earthly interests or civil pur-poses. According to Sparn, the Calvinist and Catholic metaphysics ofmorality adopted the Platonic ‘ontological’ view of evil, in terms of thecorrupting effects of matter and flesh on man’s rational soul. From theLutheran perspective, this view not only threatened to reduce moraltheology to ethics – by deriving sin and redemption from man’s philo-sophically accessible ethical substance – it also negated free will andresponsibility, mortgaging man’s moral fate to the predestined corrup-tion of his moral being. Lutheran metaphysicians like Meisner sought toavoid these consequences by treating the corruption of man’s sensiblenature as itself the product of a free choice to transgress God’s law, whilesimultaneously treating this choice in a quasi-Aristotelian manner as thefailure to realise the perfection of man’s rational soul.

Once again, we are less concerned with the detail of these early-seventeenth-century conflicts than with the fact that they gave rise to

The return of metaphysics

doctrines that would remain central to the enlightenment metaphysicsof morals. This applies in particular to the Lutheran metaphysics of evil.Lutheran metaphysicians treat evil not primarily in terms of man’scorrupt sensible nature, but in terms of the transcendent choice thatbrings this nature into being, through a ruinous ‘qualification’ of man’srational faculties. Setting aside the apparent circularity of this doctrine– for why would the first humans choose evil unless their natures werealready corrupt? – we may observe that it remains central to the meta-physical ethics developed by both Leibniz and Kant. As we shall see inmore detail below (..), Leibniz’s discussion of evil in his Theodicymoves within precisely the same pattern of thought, attempting to showhow a rational being, predisposed to evil by its corporeal embodiment,might nonetheless freely choose the corporeal nature that predisposes itto evil (Riley , –). Similarly, we shall see that Kant’s metaphys-ics of radical evil is an improvisation on the same figure of thought(..). Significantly, both philosophers invoke man’s transcendent pre-disposition to evil in order to attack the ‘indifferentist’ conception ofman’s moral nature contained in the ‘Epicurean’ anthropologies of thecivil philosophers. They do so not because of a more profound insightinto the nature of morality, but in order to defend the Christian meta-physics of morality against an anthropology that would place the deter-mination of good and evil at the disposal of civil purposes and powers.

In short, through its philosophical explication of Christian doctrine,seventeenth-century Schulmetaphysik gave rise not to a ‘rational’ (desacral-ised, detranscendentalised) philosophical theology, but to one thatpursued the sacralising ends of Christian metaphysics via other ‘enlight-ened’ means. It did so by providing its enlightenment successor with aChristological conception of homo duplex, as a morally self-redemptivebeing; an ‘anti-empiricist’ and redemptivist conception of the subjectivecharacter of the spatio-temporal world; and with a transcendent con-ception of good and evil, designed to outflank the civil determination ofethics in terms of man’s worldly need for peace and security. We shallreturn to these issues in Part .

We are now in a position to signal our fourth and final observationregarding the historiography of metaphysics as the rational subsump-tion of theology. This concerns the quasi-religious intellectual deport-ment of the metaphysician and the spiritual–social prestige attaching toit. At this point however we must depart from Sparn’s remarkable historyof Protestant Schulmetaphysik. For despite his observation of the ‘attitudeof pietas’ attaching to metaphysics through its proximity to theology, and

University metaphysics

despite his comment that ‘Protestant scholasticism corresponds to adeterminate shaping of religious life’ (, ), Sparn can provide noclear account of metaphysics as a quasi-sacral ethos. As a result of hisown commitment to Lutheran ‘dualist’ metaphysics – whose distinctivefeature is to reserve the crucial mediations of divine and human beingfor Christian theology – Sparn can only regard self-sacralising philo-sophical attempts at such mediation as indicative of the collapse of‘Christian theology’ into an ersatz philosophical theology or ‘theoso-phy’: ‘according to the Lutheran framework there is no Christian meta-physics that mediates theology as philosophy’ (). This leads him totreat the notion that metaphysics might itself perform a sacralising roleas indicative of a ‘crisis’ in Lutheran theology, one that it passed throughon its way towards a more universalistic and scientific conception of itssubject and object (Sparn ). Conversely, he regards the monis-tic–Platonic character of ‘Calvinist metaphysics’ as predisposing it tojust such a self-sacralising conception of its role. For Sparn, it is thisquasi-Platonic character – typified in its treatment of the world as con-taining the divine perfections in a form open to philosophical intellec-tion – that transforms Calvinist rationalism into the progenitor ofenlightenment rationalism, signalling the end of ‘Christian metaphysics’(Sparn , ).

A quasi-sacral understanding of its role is, however, far more deeplyand generally embedded in early modern university metaphysics thanSparn’s account can allow for. In placing divine being beyond the reachof the corrupted human faculties, all versions of metaphysics were ameans of giving shape to the personage who would overcome this cor-ruption through self-clarifying, self-purifying spiritual exercises. Despitemanifold differences, the entire spectrum of metaphysics is indebted toa single fundamental figure of thought: namely, that the gap betweendivine and human being (or the intelligible and sensible worlds) can onlybe closed by a person whose purification of his own human–sensiblenature qualifies him for participation in quasi-divine intellection.Through this figure of thought we see the fundamental and ineradicabledependence of metaphysical knowledge on the ‘ascetic’ formation of itsbearer. This formation, which merges intellectual and moral purity, isdependent on the core metaphysical anthropology of homo duplex – thefigure of sensibly embodied intelligible being – whose role is to inducethe longing for transcendent intellection.

It was through this practice of intellectual self-culture – that is, by par-ticipating in a rite of speculative self-purification deemed to qualify them

The return of metaphysics

for quasi-divine intellection – that university metaphysicians acquiredthe spiritual–social prestige needed to explicate Christian mysteries, andto advise those seeking to govern Christian states. This, after all, is pre-cisely why Thomasius identified university metaphysics with ‘sectarianphilosophy’, urging law students to repudiate its core anthropologicaldoctrines: ‘That God’s nature consists in thinking. That man’s natureconsists in thinking and that the welfare and happiness of the wholehuman race depends on the correct arrangement of thought . . . Thatthe will is improved through the understanding. That it is within humancapacity to live virtuously and happily’ (SEG, –). In order to clarifythis role of metaphysics as the ethos of a quasi-sacral estate, and therebycomplete our fourth observation, we must turn to another source.

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Post-Kantian history of philosophy prides itself on accounting for thetransition from ‘metaphysical’ to ‘anthropological’ constructions ofreason, treating this as symptomatic of reason’s progress from its theo-centric origins to the full recovery of its autonomous grounding in man.In approaching it as an ethos, however, we discover that metaphysics isitself deeply anthropological; for, no matter how theocentric its concep-tion of rational being, metaphysics remains a discipline for groomingman in the image of this conception. This shifting of the axis of histor-ical analysis is, of course, the direct outcome of our approaching philos-ophies via the anthropologies they presuppose and the spiritual exercisesthey require. In this setting, what matters is not the content of the imageof rational being – whether this is restricted to God and the pure intel-ligences, or extended to man’s own higher intelligence – but the self-formative use to which the image is put; for in each case the bearer ofthis rational being will be man, as he carries out the exercises designedto reshape himself in this image.

It is in seeking to clarify the role of university metaphysics as an intel-lectual paideia that we briefly break the bounds of our early modernfocus, in order to take advantage of a remarkable study of Albert theGreat’s Metaphysics Commentary. In doing so, we seek not to posit doctri-nal continuity between late medieval and early modern metaphysics, butto uncover the roots of university metaphysics as a distinctive culture ofthe self. Beroald Thomassen’s study of Albert’s commentaries onAristotle’s metaphysics and ethics offers invaluable assistance in thisregard (Thomassen ). It provides an outline of a metaphysical

University metaphysics

culture or Lebensform – an ensemble of doctrines and disciplines dedi-cated to a mode of spiritual grooming – which we shall find surfacingtime and again through the entire history of university metaphysics,albeit of course in a wide variety of forms. Indeed, we shall be return-ing to Thomassen’s study in order to help elucidate the sense in whichKant’s metaphysics of morals may also be regarded as a form of spiri-tual grooming (.).

At the heart of Albert’s construction of academic metaphysics is thereciprocal relation established between knowledge of its object and per-fection of the intellect that knows. Metaphysics is the highest form ofknowledge because its pursuit bestows the highest form of perfection ofwhich the human intellect is capable, its participation in the divine; whilephysics and mathematics only perfect the intellect in its temporal andspatial forms, respectively. As Albert formulates this in his MetaphysicsCommentary: through metaphysics ‘we accede to that true wisdom of phi-losophy, which perfects the intellect according to the degree that some-thing divine exists in us; in the same way that natural science perfects theintellect so far as it is bound to time, and inclined to the continuum[space], to the extent that it is perfected by instruction’ (Albert inThomassen , , fn. ). This is the basis on which Thomasseneffects the fundamental methodological shift lying at the centre of hisstudy. It allows him to show that Albert’s exposition of the foundationsof metaphysics is not grounded in concepts thinkable by a generichuman subject. Rather, the pursuit of foundations takes place insteadthrough a construction that ties the concepts of metaphysics to the moralcondition of the being qualified as their bearer:

The grounding of metaphysics, which . . . is a constitutive element of metaphys-ics itself, is not simply aimed at the exposition of a logically and factually coher-ent system of metaphysical basic concepts – concepts suited to comprehendingthe object domain of metaphysics in a subject-independent manner and todemarcating it from the object domain of other sciences. The grounding ofmetaphysics asks more generally for the enabling of metaphysics as a sciencewhose bearer is man, and is to this degree anthropocentric. (Thomassen ,)

Thomassen argues that Albert constructs the possibility of metaphys-ics through a complex set of doctrines regarding the nature and relationsof divine and human being (, –). According to these doctrines,which Albert elaborates through an Averroistic paraphrase of Aristotle’sMetaphysics, God exists as a pure intellect spontaneously thinking theforms of the intelligible world. He is related to man by virtue of the fact

The metaphysical ethos

that man, despite being an embodied creature, also possesses a pureintellect, or at least the potential to realise one. In fact man’s intellect isregarded as the ‘substantial form’ or telos of his being, itself emanatingfrom the divine intellect. This means that the ‘completion’ of man’sintellect, through the discipline of metaphysics, signifies both the perfec-tion of the human being and its partial return to God.

This metaphysical anthropology is indispensable for understandingnot just the grounding of metaphysics as a science, but also the model-ling of the intellectual deportment whose grooming lies at the heart ofmetaphysics as an academic culture. According to Albert, metaphysicsis founded in man’s desire for knowledge of it; but this subjective ground-ing also has an objective dimension, as the desire arises from the onto-logical difference between the divine and human intellects. The divineintellect differs from the human one by virtue of the fact that it is pureactive intellection (Thomassen , –). Unhampered by thepassive or receptive faculties characteristic of the human, the divineintellect knows things by bringing them forth from its own thinking,creating the ‘intelligibles’ or substantial forms of all things throughreflection on itself, which means that the divine intellect creates andencounters the world through spontaneous self-reflection. The sponta-neous activity of the divine intellect is linked to its perfect simplicity, forthis allows it to have direct intuitive knowledge of the simple (non-embodied) substances – the intelligibles that arise from its intellection ofthem. The human intellect, though, ‘beshadowed’ through its combina-tion with space and time, and complexified through its possession ofpassive receptive faculties, is incapable of knowing the intelligible formsdirectly in their simple non-embodied state. It encounters them insteadonly as they have been ‘scattered’ through space and time in materialthings (–). The human intellect is thus discursive rather than intui-tive. It must use syllogistic and other forms of argument to pick its waythrough the scatter of phenomena, gradually and painstakingly synthe-sising knowledge of the intelligible principles of the world, which areknown to the divine intellect through instantaneous and eternal self-reflection. As Heimsoeth has argued, this fundamental oppositionalelaboration between the divine and human intellects provides the basisfor the distinction between the active and passive intellect in Leibniz’smonadology, and for Kant’s distinction between noumena and phenom-ena (Heimsoeth b; Heimsoeth ; Heimsoeth ).

Given that the intelligibles or substantial forms are in fact the objectof metaphysics as a science – constituting the domain of ‘being as being’

University metaphysics

prior to its embodiment in the specific kinds of being which are theobjects of the particular sciences – then the divine intellect must be thetrue bearer of metaphysical knowledge. Indeed, Albert says that Godcontemplates himself in metaphysics. At the same time, though, becausehe too possesses the spark of an active intellect, man is also capable ofmetaphysical knowledge, even if he must, for the most part, be satisfiedwith it in the approximate form suited to his discursive faculties(Thomassen , –). The condition of man attaining this knowledgeis that he purify his intellect of its attachment to the sensory forms ofspace and time. He achieves this through the practices of abstractionand speculation, the three speculative sciences – (Aristotelian) physics,(Euclidean) mathematics, and metaphysics – constituting in fact a hier-archy of ways of perfecting the human intellect (). In other words, thehuman intellect accedes to metaphysical knowledge only to the degreethat it transforms itself into an approximation of the divine. Man onlycomes to grasp the simple non-embodied substances to the extent thathe ‘participates’ in the simple divine intellect that emanates them ().Abstraction and speculation in metaphysics thus assume the form ofspiritual exercises, representing a work of self-purification performed bythe intellect on itself.

Three features of Thomassen’s account are of particular significancefor our conjectural outline of the culture of university metaphysics. First,the reciprocal relation between the knowledge of metaphysics and the‘spiritual’ or moral constitution of its bearer means that metaphysics isalways shadowed by a particular moral anthropology. In Albert’sAristotelian version this reciprocity is focused in the figure of the ‘sepa-rated’ or non-embodied substantial forms. For these are both the objectthat man strives to know in order to have access to ‘being as being’; andthey are also the principles that make everything knowable, to which manaccedes only by perfecting his own substantial form, his intellect. Ofcourse, the particular character of this reciprocity between the metaphys-ical subject and object alters when the Aristotelian substantial forms arereplaced by the Scotist treatment of being in terms of the divine intellect’snon-contradictory intelligising of possibilia, some of which it then willsinto actual existence (Möhle ). But this does not alter the fundamen-tal ‘ascetic’ reciprocity between the object and subject of metaphysics.For, in Scotist metaphysics, it remains God’s simple, spontaneous, andintuitive intellect that is responsible for the non-contradictory intelligisingof the possible concepts; and it is still man’s duplex, sensible–intellectualsubjectivity that must be purified through abstraction in order to qualify

The metaphysical ethos

it for knowledge of this object (Honnefelder , –). Seen in thislight, Sparn’s distinction between ‘Lutheran’ and ‘Calvinist’ metaphysics– the former insisting that the limits of the human intellect preclude its‘philosophical’ participation in divine intellection, the latter arguing thatsuch participation is possible for a suitably purified intellect – does not rep-resent the difference between a truly theological and a merely ‘theosoph-ical’ metaphysics. Instead, it points to a confessional variation in theanthropology being used to configure the intellectual deportment of themetaphysician.

Second, the manner in which the metaphysical anthropology ties theknowledge of its objects to the moral constitution of its bearer also holdsthe key to the discipline’s ‘ascetic’ or self-transformative character.Albert regarded the gap between human and divine intellection as theenabling condition of metaphysics. By separating man’s natural desirefor knowledge from its satisfaction, this gap creates the need for aspecifically metaphysical knowledge – that is, for knowledge of things inthe pure form in which they emanate from the divine intellect(Thomassen , –). Through the teaching that only God has fullpossession of metaphysical knowledge, man comes to know himself asthe being who seeks this knowledge and whose perfection lies in itsattainment. For, unless metaphysical knowledge were inaccessible toman, he would not desire it (–). This is why Albert says that meta-physics is founded in wonder – the impact of man’s ignorance on himself– which causes him to turn from the practical to the theoretic life, as theonly way of overcoming his deficit (–).

For Albert, of course, man’s desire for metaphysics comes ultimatelyfrom God, whose perfect contemplative felicity makes his condition themost desirable possible. From a properly historical perspective, however,it is the paideia of metaphysics itself – inculcated in religious or academicinstitutions dedicated to grooming the spiritual elite – that is responsiblefor inducing the desire for metaphysical knowledge. It does so byimbuing its novices with a view of themselves as beings cut off fromdivine intellection by the sensible embodiment of their intellects.Through this anthropologically induced pathos, apprentice philoso-phers are disposed to relate to themselves as beings whose true selves liein the pursuit of metaphysical knowledge. This mode of relating tothemselves in turn impels their adherence to metaphysics as an ethos; forit leads them to treat the discipline of metaphysics as the means of pur-ifying their sense-affected intellects, hoping thereby to realise the pureone in which the intelligible forms of the world will be revealed. We may

University metaphysics

pause to observe how profoundly this alters our understanding of Kant’sdoctrine of the inaccessibility of noumena – the intelligibles createdthrough divine intellection – to human understanding. We should regardthis doctrine neither as if noumena were real entities lying beyondhuman intelligence (the ‘metaphysical’ interpretation), nor as if theywere null posits designed to restrict reason to empirical experience (the‘phenomenalist’ interpretation). Instead, we can treat the inaccessibilityof the Kantian noumena as the latest variation in a longstanding paideiadesigned to induce the pathos of metaphysical longing and the ethos ofintellectual self-purification. This paideia continues to work its magiceven on today’s philosophers (Holzhey ).

Finally, in tying human perfection to the characteristic life-activity ofthe metaphysician, the self-transformative function of university meta-physics gives rise to a particular claim to moral and social authority.Here, in defending the vita contemplativa as the highest form of life – onthe basis of Aristotle’s subordination of civil well-being to contemplativehappiness – Albert again prefigures a key tendency of the whole cultureof university metaphysics. Thomassen argues that the Aristotelian hier-archy of forms of life is based on the fundamental distinction betweenactivities undertaken in order to realise some end and those undertakenfor their own sake. Perfect happiness arises only from the latter kind ofactivity; for, by being its own end or good, such activity depends uponno goods outside itself, thereby unifying all the goods and becomingautarkic (, ). Contemplation is the only activity of this kind,which means that contemplative happiness is the highest possible andthe contemplative life the most virtuous, as man is perfectly happy onlywhen he possesses all the virtues.

Civil happiness though arises from activity undertaken in accordancewith a single virtue: prudence (, ). Prudence is the form of all thecivil virtues, as it is the principle of acting to realise some end, typicallythe political and commercial ends of civil life. The man of justice or polit-icus perfects the virtue of prudence, and his role is to realise the civilsecurity required for the man of wisdom or philosophus to pursue the trueend of humanity, speculation. Despite the fact that prudence plays a nec-essary role in providing the personal and social tranquillity required forspeculation, it cannot be compared with the summa of the virtues in con-templation, which means that civil happiness is only a preparatory stagefor contemplative happiness. This is because, through theoretical activ-ity, the higher part of the soul is enlightened by the active intellect, per-mitting it to ‘touch’ the domain of the intelligences, thereby perfecting

The metaphysical ethos

man. Prudential activity and civil happiness, though, are viewed as prod-ucts of the lower or ‘unenlightened’ part of the rational soul, governedby the ends of useful action in the civil world (–). Here we can seethe genesis of the entire line of ‘anti-consequentialist’, anti-civil moraland political philosophy – from Leibniz through Wolff to Kant andbeyond – whose hostility to civil prudence is grounded in the self-sacral-ising cultivation of contemplative autarky.

With this account of metaphysical anthropology as an instrument forthe spiritual grooming of a ‘contemplative’ intellectual elite, we com-plete our fourth and final observation on the history of metaphysics asthe philosophical subsumption of theology. We have argued that thereturn of metaphysics to the early-seventeenth-century Protestant uni-versity was driven by the exigencies of confessional conflict rather thanthe need to recover man’s rational being. Rather than responding to arational need for the unity of ‘philosophy’ and theology, it imposed thisunity – in conflicting ways – at the behest of confessional theologies.Further, rather than bequeathing a rational philosophical theology tothe Enlightenment, the philosophical explication of the Christian mys-teries in Schulmetaphysik gave rise to natural theologies in which the endsof Christian metaphysics would be pursued via ‘rationalist’ means.Finally, in grasping that the metaphysician returned to the academy notas the subject of reason but as the bearer of an elite self-sacralisingculture, we have begun to grasp the source of the authority wielded bythis personage. We shall conclude our overview of university metaphys-ics with a few remarks on this last topic.

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In responding to the account of the return of metaphysics as a purelyrational–philosophical phenomenon, we have begun to show its role inthe confessional–political circumstances of early modern Germany,concentrating on the cultural authority claimed by university philoso-phers as a particular estate. By cultivating insight into the transcendentconcepts and laws of a divinely intelligised universe, metaphysicallytrained philosophers could present themselves to bishops and princes asuniquely able to discern the true ends of church and state. At the sametime, the reciprocity between religious and civil discipline in early-seventeenth-century cities and states provided political metaphysicianswith a context well suited to the reactivation of this ostensibly ancientform of spiritual–political authority. In this religiously charged political

University metaphysics

environment – in which conflicts between Empire and territorial statewere deeply informed by those between opposed confessional-politicalestates – university philosophers could seek to shape civil governance inaccordance with their quasi-sacral role as ‘Christian philosophers’.

This is, of course, a highly idealised portrait. In seeking to provide itwith concrete historical anchorage – by briefly discussing the Politica() of Johannes Althusius – we encounter all the difficulties ofattempting to clarify the significance of abstract thought in highlyramified historical–political circumstances (Althusius ; Friedrich). Althusius was a political philosopher rather than a universitymetaphysician and, as Robert von Friedeburg has shown, his Politica rep-resents a sophisticated attempt to configure the political relationsbetween the Empire and the territorial estates (Friedeburg ).Nonetheless, without dissenting from Friedeburg’s account, we mayobserve that Althusius relies on several leading Calvinist metaphysiciansand theologians, including Keckermann, Zanchius, Aretius, Ursinus,and of course Calvin. Moreover, as Sparn has argued, in providing anoverarching theological ordering of the contents of politics, ethics, andjurisprudence, Althusius’ Politica is a characteristic instance of confes-sional Schulphilosophie (Sparn ). In the Preface to the third edition wethus find Althusius arguing that: ‘I claim the Decalogue as proper topolitical science insofar as it breathes a vital spirit into symbiotic life, andgives form to it and conserves it, in which sense it is essential andhomogenous to political science and heterogeneous to other arts . . . Noone denies, however, that all arts are united in practice’ (Althusius ,).

This theological framing of politics, however, is only a pointer toAlthusius’ central political–metaphysical construct: his concept of ‘uni-versal symbiotic communion’ (communio symbiotica universalis). In stressinghis difference from those, like Bodin, who locate sovereignty in theprince and the supreme magistracy, Althusius insists that it resides in the‘universal consociation’ or ‘the people’. For Althusius, sovereignty comesfrom the associated people because the conservation of their welfare,which forms the end of politics, arises not from the exercise of princelypower, but from the communication of rights and capacities in univer-sal symbiosis: ‘Universal symbiotic communion is the process by whichthe members of the realm or universal association communicate every-thing necessary and useful to it, and remove and do away with every-thing to the contrary’ (, ). By grounding political right in acommunion of the people that is simultaneously spiritual and material,

Political metaphysics

the Politica achieves the integration of religious and civil governance,which is the hallmark of confessional political theologies:

Universal symbiotic communion is both ecclesiastical and secular. Correspond-ing to the former are religion and piety, which pertain to the welfare and eternallife of the soul, the entire first table of the Decalogue. Corresponding to thelatter is justice, which concerns the use of the body and of this life, and the ren-dering to each his due, the second table of the Decalogue. In the former, every-thing is to be referred immediately to the glory of God; in the latter, to the utilityand welfare of the people associated in one body. These are the two founda-tions of every good association. (Althusius , )

This metaphysical grounding of right and law in the spontaneousspiritual and physical communication between community membersholds the key to Althusius’ political and religious doctrines. It allows him,for example, to include both tables of the Decalogue in his conceptionof natural law, on the grounds that this law expresses the fundamentalforms of spiritual and civil communion of the ‘symbiotes’. Further, italso permits him to insist on the superiority of this theologicallyinformed natural law over the civil law propounded by jurists andprinces: ‘For there is no civil law, nor can there be any, in which some-thing of natural and divine immutable equity has not been mixed. If itdeparts entirely from the judgment of natural and divine law ( jus natu-rale et divinum), it is not to be called law (lex). It is entirely unworthy of thisname, and can obligate no one against natural and divine equity’ (,). Finally, and most importantly, Althusius’ metaphysical conception ofpolitical community lies at the root of his construction of popular sove-reignty. For it allows him to argue – against Bodin’s political jurispru-dence and Machiavelli’s reason of state – that supreme political powercomes not from the sovereign’s role in securing social peace, but flowsinstead from the symbiotic community, as the means by which it enforcesthe forms of its spiritual and civil communion (–).

Given his desire to ground political sovereignty in a morally associatedpeople, and given their desire to find precursors for a rationally groundeddemocratic sovereignty, it is not surprising to find post-Kantian philo-sophical historians embracing Althusius in these terms. Beck, forexample, while acknowledging a ‘moderate’ degree of religious intoler-ance in the Althusian polity, sees the concept of political symbiosis as a‘naturalistic’ expression of Calvinist rationalism that anticipates theoriesof the secular democratic state (Beck , –). Similarly, Schmidt-Biggemann regards Althusius’ conception of natural law as anticipatingthe enlightenment subordination of positive Staatsrecht to a higher moral

University metaphysics

law, even if the confusion of moral and religious community in the con-fessional period proved an obstacle in this regard (Schmidt-Biggemannb). Historians of political thought have begun to show how inaccu-rate this view is, particularly given Althusius’ use of ‘popular sovereignty’as a means of defending the political rights of the territorial estatesagainst those of the Empire (Friedeburg ; Skinner ). Given ourinterest in Althusius as a political metaphysician, however, our attentionis focused on the manner in which the concept of symbiotic communionsuperimposes the religious on the political community.

In this regard, it is crucial to observe that Althusius’ symbiotic com-munication is grounded in the metaphysical concept of the spiritualcommunity and the religious figure of the communion of the saints inChrist’s mystical body. Althusius’ account of the role of the provincialreligious estate (Geistliche Stand) shows just how tightly these conceptionsbind the religious and civil concerns of the Politica:

A collegium of pious, learned and most weighty men from the collegia of pro-vincial clergymen, elected and commissioned by common consent, representsthe sacred and ecclesiastical order. Entrusted to this collegium is the examina-tion and care of doctrine, of public reverence and divine worship, of schools,of ecclesiastical goods and of the poor. Indeed, the care of all ecclesiastical busi-ness of the holy life in the entire province is entrusted to it in order that all thesaints may unite for a common ministry, and constitute one mystical body.(Althusius , )

If the conception of symbiotic communion permitted Althusius toground sovereignty in moral community, then it simultaneously allowedhim to conceive of a civil exercise of religious authority, designed toconform the fallen civil community to its spiritual archetype. Thismerging of religious and civil discipline is particularly apparent in hisaccount of the provincial presbyters, ‘to whom is assigned the adminis-tration of ecclesiastical things – that is, the administration of thingsother than the word and sacraments – for holding the saints together, forthe work of the ministry and for building up the body of Christ’. He con-tinues:

Upon the presbyters rests especially the care of those things that have been insti-tuted for arousing repentance in the brethren and for conserving discipline.Therefore, together with bishops, who are properly called presbyters, theypreside over censorship of morals. Their office is also to observe that ministersperform their duties, and to disclose errors, schisms, scandals, and public neces-sities to the ministers for the purpose of producing prayers and repentance.(, )

Political metaphysics

It is also on this basis that ‘the presbytery receives from God the powerof the keys by which the kingdom of heaven opens and closes’ ().

Writ large, the Politica provides a political theology for the Protestantterritorial state of the pre-Westphalian period. It seems likely, however,that its concrete political correlate is to be found in the governance of theImperial city-state, jointly ruled by councillors and presbyters. In fact, inthe Calvinist city-state of Emden, where Althusius held the position ofSyndic or chief magistrate from to , we find a practice of pres-byterial governance strikingly like that outlined in the Politica. HeinzSchilling’s research in the Emden presbyterial archives gives us somesense of the way in which Althusius’ programmatic identification of spir-itual and political community was played out in historical reality(Schilling ). In showing how the city presbyters used ex-communica-tion (‘the power of the keys’) to punish a wide variety of civil misdemea-nours – drunkenness, fights between neighbours, sexual transgressions –this research shows that it was in fact the circle of communicants thatformed the model for the political community. Breaches in the moralpurity required for holy communion thus led to disqualification from civilassociation. In short, while Althusius sought an appropriate figuration forthe governance of the city and the state, his Politica was grounded in thepolitical metaphysics of the church, as the kingdom of God on earth.

By grounding civil authority in moral community, the political meta-physics of universal symbiotic communion allowed Althusius to attackBodin’s purely political–juridical conception of sovereignty. But thismetaphysics simultaneously committed him to using civil authority inorder to enforce moral community. As we noted in the Introduction, inattacking political metaphysics Thomasius alleged just such a homologybetween the merging of theology and the civil sciences in ‘sectarian phi-losophy’, and the merging of religious and civil power in the confessionalstate. It was for this reason that civil philosophy emerged as a profoundrepudiation of all forms of university metaphysics, Catholic andProtestant, secular and theological.

University metaphysics

Civil philosophy

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In the Foreword that he wrote to the first German translation of Grotius’De Jure Belli ac Pacis (), Christian Thomasius was in no doubt aboutwho the enemy was. In outlining the damage done to law, ethics, andpolitics by scholasticism, he begins with the four books of PeterLombard’s Sentences, attacking them for offering a philosophical explica-tion of Christian doctrine:

It is likely that in these four books Lombard attempted to unite the doctrines ofAugustine and Aristotle; [for] the whole work contains a mish-mash of theol-ogy and philosophy. The Holy Scriptures are explained in accordance with theprinciples of pagan philosophy. In ethics and natural law the old stupidities areadvanced. Lombard’s book was the staff and rod of the theology faculty, overwhich the theology professors fought in their glosses, just as the jurists foughtover their Corpus juris.

If scholasticism corrupted religion, then it simultaneously gave rise tophilosophical sectarianism among those purporting to offer the one truemetaphysics of faith:

Because their explanations were not of a single opinion and yet each claimedto be right, various sects arose among these orthodox scholastics, including theAlbertists, the Thomists, the Scotists, and the Occamists, among whom the rep-utation of Thomas Aquinas overwhelmed the rest. [Aquinas] not only wrote acommentary on Lombard but also a new system of theology, which led manyto later forget Lombard in order to write commentaries on Thomas, as we findwith Thomas de Vio Cajetan, Bartholomew Medina, Gabriel Vasquez andFrancisco Suárez. One can expect to find nothing rational in any of these,because everything arises from subtleties, authority and from being self-opin-ionated. One also finds that doctrines belonging to ethics and natural law beginto be ascribed to the theology faculty, under all kinds of titles. (VG, )

Further, if university metaphysics was a weapon for theologising ethicsand natural law, then it was wielded in the interests of priestcraft:

When, however, the Pope and the clerisy were assured that Aristotelian meta-physics, physics and ethics did no harm to their glory – because there is little ornothing in them that can be applied to the right use of the natural light [ofreason] – and in fact it rather appeared that Aristotelian philosophy increasedthe clerisy’s authority, [then] . . . physics, metaphysics, and ethics were publiclytaught in accordance with Aristotelian doctrine. (VG, )

This problem, however, was not just confined to the Catholic scholastics.Despite Luther’s banishment of metaphysics from Protestant academiesat the beginning of the sixteenth century, by the beginning of the seven-teenth it had returned, modelled in part on the teachings of FranciscoSuárez, who ‘began to expound mystical theology in accordance with ascholastic method’. As a result:

In claiming that the Augsburg Confession is grounded only in this theologicalsystem, not though in ethics and natural law or in the Corpus juris, Protestanttheologians and philosophers – that is, all those who have to teach about thedifference between good and evil, right and wrong – feel able to follow theCatholic writers in these questions of right and wrong without any inhibition. . . So it happened that also everywhere at Protestant universities, moral phi-losophy and jurisprudence were bundled together without foundation, by manysometimes opposed writers. (VG, )

Finally, if the long ruination of the civil sciences could thus be laid at thefeet of a metaphysical scholasticism – Protestant and Catholic – thentheir renewal was largely the work of the jurists, political and natural.Despite their own inability to relegate Roman law in favour of modernpublic and natural law, the French jurists Francis Hotman and JeanBodin should be honoured among ‘the legists who everywhere began todefend the rights of worldly authority against the tyranny of the clergy’(VG, ). For the full detheologisation of ethics and politics, however, thelearned world had to wait for the natural law of Grotius and Hobbes,and, more importantly, of Pufendorf.

We shall return to Thomasius’ remarkable cultural diagnosis in thefinal section of this chapter (.). For the moment, we can treat it asindicative of the historical self-consciousness with which the civil philos-ophers grasped their conflict with metaphysical scholasticism and con-structed an alternative to it. Not only does Thomasius trace the mixingof theology and the civil sciences to the metaphysical explication of theChristian mysteries, he also identifies this with the sacerdotal exercise ofauthority by a clerisy. Further, he is aware that the natural law doctrinesthat would carry an alternative civil philosophy were grounded in a juris-prudence dedicated to the defence of worldly civil authority. Regardless

Civil philosophy

of what today’s philosophical historians might say, rather than seeingthe seventeenth-century return of metaphysics as the resumption ofreason’s journey of self-discovery, Thomasius treats it as indicative of thetheological contamination of ethics, law, and politics by a clerisy bent ondefending its civil power.

Given the clarity with which Thomasius grasped the historical needfor a civil philosophy, the great puzzle confronting its modern historianis this philosophy’s present obscurity. The obscurity has two mainsources. Firstly, civil philosophy has been subjected to historiographiesintent on reducing its jurisprudential, political, and theological charac-ter to realities of a quite different kind. On the one hand, it has been sub-jected to sociological histories dedicated to showing the emergence of asocially grounded democratic reason. Such histories can only under-stand the expert (political–jurisprudential) and non-democratic (author-itarian–liberal) character of civil philosophy as aberrations arising fromthe social alienation of reason. On the other hand, as we have alreadyseen, civil philosophy has also undergone reduction and assimilation atthe hands of a philosophical history that identifies reason with meta-physical philosophy.

The second reason for civil philosophy’s current obscurity is minor incomparison, but arises from a degree of uncertainty regarding thesources and form of its ‘civil’ character. Although historians of politicalthought agree that seventeenth-century Germany gave rise to civil sci-ences oriented to the desacralised government of a secular state, there issignificant disagreement regarding the respective roles of law and poli-tics in this development. As mentioned in the Introduction, some histo-rians trace the desacralisation of government to its juridification, whileothers ascribe it to the emergence of political humanism, albeit ofvarying kinds. These differences have in turn affected the manner inwhich historians regard the central organ of civil philosophy, the‘modern’ natural law of Grotius, Pufendorf, and Thomasius. Some, likeTuck, see this ‘profane’ natural law as playing a mediating role betweena political humanism oriented to ‘reason of state’ and one dedicated toshaping sovereignty in accordance with the norms of civic republican-ism (Tuck a). Others though, particularly Dreitzel, see natural lawas a normative juridical retreat from a statist political science (Dreitzelb). Finally, Heckel and Kriegel both treat natural law as the philo-sophical expression of a politics already desacralised by jurisprudence(Heckel –, , –; Kriegel ).

It is by working our way through these positions – from all of which

Introduction

there is much to learn – that we shall arrive at our account of naturallaw as the intellectual clearing house for seventeenth-century civil phi-losophy. In doing so we shall outline a less exclusivist treatment of therelation between politics and law. In fact we shall argue that while therewas indeed a juridical detheologisation of politics, this had the paradox-ical effect of placing the sovereign above the law, by neutralising themoral-theological restraints on secular politics. The remarkable thingabout the natural law doctrines developed by Pufendorf and Thomasiusis that they may be regarded as reconstructing academic ethics and pol-itics in order to reflect this juridical unleashing of a fully secular politics– but doing so in the very discipline that had been designed to preventthis from occurring.

In order to provide an appropriate understanding of the emergenceof civil philosophy, therefore, we must undertake two preliminary tasks.First, we must disarm those sociological and philosophical historieswhose objective is to treat civil philosophy as a defective expression ofsociety and reason. Next, we must clarify the relation between the jurid-ical and political dimensions of civil philosophy. Then we will be in aposition to grasp the full significance of Thomasius’ diagnosis of his ownhistorical situation.

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Jutta Brückner’s Staatswissenschaften, Kameralismus und Naturrecht offers anaccount of the emergence of the civil sciences by tying them to the his-torical sociology of bourgeois society. For its part, Michael Albrecht’sEklektik incorporates an account of civil philosophy in a Begriffsgeschichteor conceptual history of early modern eclectic philosophy. Despite theirmethodological differences, it is striking that these representatives of his-torical sociology and philosophical history both treat the (authoritarian)political–jurisprudential character of civil philosophy as indicative ofcultural–historical ‘failure’. For Brückner this is the failure of Germanyto ground its law and politics in a democratically self-governedÖffentlichkeit or ‘public sphere’. For Albrecht it is the failure of the eclec-tic civil philosophy to ground itself in the true (a-priori–systematic) con-ditions of subjectivity. Neither is it coincidental that both histories sharea similar dialectical method. For, by construing ‘failure’ in terms of themisfiring of dialectical integration, these histories locate the (statist)political–jurisprudential character of seventeenth-century civil philoso-phy as a blockage in a historical dynamic which is intrinsically oriented

Civil philosophy

to a self-governing society or a self-governing reason. If, therefore, we areto reinstate the historical reality and autonomy of civil philosophy, wemust show why early modern politics and jurisprudence cannot beexplained either in terms of a theory of bourgeois society or in terms ofa philosophy of subjectivity.

Brückner’s account of the emergence of the early modern civil sci-ences – economics, politics, jurisprudence – is framed by a conceptionof their prior moral unity. This conception is partly institutional–histor-ical – with Brückner pointing to their scholastic treatment as branchesof practical philosophy – but it is more importantly socio-moral. It iscentral to her account that the civil sciences precipitate from the milieuof the early modern court, where they had been unified within a con-crete social ethos or way of moral life: ‘because in and around the court,the professional and social spheres, the life-realm and the realm ofefficiency coalesce’ (Brückner , ). As for Habermas, on whoseaccount of the relation between theory and practice she relies, forBrückner the seventeenth-century political and juristic sciences emergefrom the splintering of a prior social order, in which the ends of politicsand law had been embedded in moral culture and social relations. Shethus regards the ‘prudential’ character and expert basis of these sciencesas symptomatic of the loss of their organic relation to a moral-democ-ratic ‘public sphere’ (Öffentlichkeit). In this regard at least, Brückner’saccount joins several others that ascribe a ‘conservative’ or ‘authoritar-ian’ character to German culture and politics on the basis of its supposedlack of an appropriate material basis in liberal-democratic society(Epstein ; Krieger ).

In projecting this social theory onto the early modern civil scientistsand natural jurists, Brückner’s account can only view them in relation tothe splitting of theory and practice, and the consequent alienation ofreason from the social ‘life-world’. She thus characterises the objectify-ing political science of Arnisaeus and Conring – dedicated to treatingthe maintenance of political order as a ‘therapeutic’ (non-moral)problem – as symptomatic of the instrumentalising of formerly moralarts of government (Brückner , ). Drawing on Denzer’s neo-Aristotelian reading of Pufendorf, Brückner treats his natural law asdamaged by the instrumentalising of politics, but as retaining a residualnormative–legal character, grounded in a teleological conception ofhuman sociability (–). It is left to Thomasius therefore to dissolvethe last fragile bonds linking politics and morality, practice and theory inthe civil sciences. Drawing on Werner Schneiders’ influential study of

Reductions of the civil: society and reason

Thomasius, Brückner argues that this occurs in two stages. First,Thomasius replaces Pufendorf ’s moral conception of natural law (as thelaw of human sociality) with a purely prudential conception of it as themeans to political security. Next he introduces an anthropology based in‘physiological facts’ – actually, the Epicurean anthropology of passion-driven man – which leads him to abandon the image of man as a ration-ally self-governing creature. In its place, Thomasius develops a purelyprudential or instrumental ethics. This is grounded in the self-restraintneeded for inner peace (morality), and the observance of social mannersneeded for civil peace (decorum), breaches of which would be punishedby the law (Brückner , –).

We can now see how difficult it is for histories based in modern socialtheory to grasp the circumstances that gave rise to early modern civilphilosophy. Due to her own commitment to a socio-morally groundedpolitical order, Brückner misunderstands the imperatives driving theearly modern separation of state and society in political and natural law.In treating the uncoupling of government from moral community assymptomatic of the instrumental fracturing of the ‘life-world’, she failsto grasp its driving force: namely, the attempts by political and naturaljurists to render the state independent of the fratricidal moral commu-nities that had plunged Europe into religious civil war. This, as Dreitzelhas shown, was one of the central preoccupations of Helmstedt politi-cal Aristotelianism (Arnisaeus and Conring). Here the therapeuticobjectification of politics represented not a lapsing into political instru-mentalism but its difficult achievement, through a protracted exercise inintellectual reconstruction (Dreitzel ; Dreitzel ). In detachingthe concept of political order from moral–philosophical and natural lawnorms – the very move that Brückner identifies with the social alienationof political knowledge – Arnisaeus intended to free it from the confes-sional division and conflict that entered politics through these norms.Rather than expressing the social interests of a rising class of bourgeoisprofessionals, the autonomising of political expertise in Helmstedt polit-ical science was the expression of a fundamental cultural–intellectualstrategy, developed as a means of desacralising civil governance.

Similarly, in restricting law to the commands of a sovereign chargedwith maintaining social peace, decorum to the cultivation of the exter-nal manners required by social intercourse, and morality to the restraintof the passions required by inner serenity, Thomasius was not the unwit-ting representative of a bourgeois professionalism intent on monopolis-ing political expertise and privatising moral aspiration. Rather, as a

Civil philosophy

law professor and jurisconsult to the Brandenburg-Prussian state,Thomasius was the self-conscious representative of a deep-seated cam-paign to destroy the infrastructure of the confessional politics by parti-tioning civil and religious authority (Dreitzel ; Wiebking ).Thomasius’ juridification of politics and ‘Epicurean’ privatisation ofmorality – which Brückner identifies with the bourgeois-professionalfragmentation of a political public sphere – thus reveal a starkly differentface to us. Rather than representing hindrances to the emergence of aparticipatory civil society, they were in fact part of a strategy for thedeconfessionalisation and pacification of societies that had been all tooparticipatory. Through its anti-political and anti-juridical interpretationof the early modern civil sciences – as symptoms of the alienation ofpolitical expertise from moral community – historical social theoryforgets just how hard won and fragile this alienation was, not to mentionhow indispensable.

While deploying a different methodology, Michael Albrecht’sBegriffsgeschichte of ‘eclectic philosophy’ suffers from a similar inability tograsp the historical sources and purposes of civil philosophy. At firstsight, Albrecht’s history of early modern ‘eclectic philosophy’ encom-passes a broader scope than the civil philosophy with which we are con-cerned. Yet, because the eclectic style was defined primarily by itsopposition to scholasticism, and was typically dedicated to advancing amore irenic pluralistic philosophical discourse, it actually overlaps withthe domain of civil philosophy, in a manner that we shall clarify. Despiteits philosophical–historical character, Albrecht’s history shares many ofthe features and all of the limitations of Brückner’s historical–sociolog-ical account. For in discussing the ‘civil’ dimension of eclectic philoso-phy – its ‘anti-sectarian’ (anti-scholastic) pursuit of an irenic pluralisticphilosophical style suited to life in a deconfessionalised civil society –Albrecht deploys a familiar dialectical strategy. He treats this as the‘delayed’ or incomplete form of a systematic philosophy whose recoveryof the a priori forms of subjectivity would render eclectic philosophyredundant. In adopting this telos for his history, Albrecht’s account isclosely associated with the post-Kantian dialectical histories whosegeneral form and limitations we have already discussed; and, in fact,several of the key dialectical historians have written accounts of eclecti-cism broadly similar to Albrecht’s (Holzhey ; Schmidt-Biggemann; Schneiders a).

Despite their exhaustive breadth, Albrecht’s materials are shaped bya single powerful dialectical schema. After characterising eclecticism as

Reductions of the civil: society and reason

the pursuit of free choice among different philosophies in order to arriveat truth, Albrecht opens a fundamental opposition within it. On the onehand, he argues, eclecticism was an idea, attitude, or intellectual deport-ment (Denkart, Einstellung). This was adopted by a range of early modernphilosophers, jurists, and theologians seeking to cultivate intellectualindependence, usually in opposition to various forms of scholasticismand orthodoxy. On the other hand, Albrecht claims, eclecticism was alsoa method for discovering the truth, modelled at this time on the hypo-thetical procedure employed by the seventeenth-century experimentalphysicist Johann Sturm (Albrecht , –, , –, –, ).Albrecht’s Begriffsgeschichte is premised on the unargued (ultimatelyHegelian) doctrine that for the eclectic idea to step into history as anautonomous or self-grounded concept, then it would have to be possiblefor the eclectic attitude to be reconciled with the eclectic method. Thismust occur in a manner that reconciles the former’s aspiration tofreedom of intellectual choice with the latter’s methodologically guaran-teed access to truth.

Albrecht argues that such a dialectical union was not possible underthe name of eclecticism. For to the extent that eclectic philosophers cul-tivated the attitude of free choice they lacked a fundamental methodcapable of grounding this choice in demonstrable truth, which meantthat this wing of eclecticism petered out in the merely fashionable culti-vation of Selbstdenken or intellectual freedom (, –, –, –).Conversely, to the extent that eclectic philosophy did possess a methodproducing demonstrable truth – Sturm’s hypothetico-experimentalmethod – then it lost the attitude of reflective choice among philoso-phies, solidifying into a merely scientific certainty (–). The strikingresult of this procedure is that Albrecht writes the history of a conceptof philosophy that never really succeeded in existing: ‘One finds scarcelya single author embracing eclecticism who made the transition to praxis’(). At the same time, because Albrecht’s history is organised arounda particular philosophical–historical telos – namely, the idea of a philos-ophy whose ‘scientific’ method is simultaneously the reflective recoveryof the grounds of free intellectual choice – it is actually oriented to a styleof philosophy he regards as destined to eclipse eclecticism: the ‘criticalrationalism’ of the Leibniz–Wolff–Kant line (–). Albrecht thus treatsthe emergence of Wolffian rationalism as signalling the appearance of amethod that was capable of grounding the intellect’s free judgments ina systematic recovery of their a priori conceptual grounds. According toAlbrecht, this discovery abolished the need for any merely contingent

Civil philosophy

cultivation of an eclectic attitude. In absorbing the capacity for freeintellectual choice into the methodological recovery of its transcendentgrounds, Wolff’s critical rationalism thus subjected eclectic philosophy toan Hegelian Aufhebung – preserving it by annihilating it (–).

Thomasius’ civil philosophy fares particularly badly under this dialec-tical regime, falling foul of both of Albrecht’s strategies for denyingthe reality of eclectic philosophy. On the one hand, in discussingThomasius’ Introductio ad Philosophiam Aulicam () – translatable asIntroduction to Court Philosophy but also as Introduction to Civil Philosophy, giventhe role of the court as a metonym for civil politics – Albrecht arguesthat while cultivating the eclectic attitude as a means of attacking ‘sec-tarian’ (scholastic) philosophy, this work fails to count as eclectic philos-ophy. In developing merely empirical versions of logic and ethics,grounded in the use of concepts and norms suited to civil communica-tion and civil intercourse, Thomasius is deemed to lack the systematicmethod capable of grounding his eclectic comportment in philosophi-cal truth. This leads Albrecht to consign him to the ranks of the modishSelbstdenkers (, –). On the other hand, drawing on biographi-cal accounts of his reconversion to a biblicistic Pietism in , Albrechtargues that Thomasius’ methodologically unsupported eclectic attitudecollapses into an irrational fideism, whose central document is the Versuchvom Wesen des Geistes (Essay on the Nature of Spirits, ). Here, saysAlbrecht, Thomasius’ ‘eclectic’ attack on the mixing of philosophy andtheology in sectarian philosophy has itself become sectarian, beinggrounded in adherence to a neo-Platonic nature philosophy of a quasi-Paracelsan kind (–). In short Thomasius occupies an exemplaryplace in Albrecht’s history because his work encapsulates the larger fateof eclectic philosophy. Both are condemned to oscillate between an anti-sectarian eclecticism whose lack of true philosophical method reduces itto a mere attitude, and a merely concrete method whose lack oftranscendental reflexivity reduces it to another form of sectarianism.

Once again, however, we are confronted by an approach to earlymodern ‘civil eclectic’ philosophy that misunderstands its historicalcircumstances and intellectual form. As we shall see in more detail below(.), Thomasius’ support of eclectic philosophy arose not from thismodish incapacity to penetrate the transcendental conditions of subjec-tivity, but from his anti-scholastic campaign to uncouple philosophyfrom theology. In the Foreword to Grotius, Thomasius’ objection to themerging of ethics, law, and politics in neoscholastic natural law isgrounded in his acute sense of its role as a prop for the power of the

Reductions of the civil: society and reason

clerisy. By separating philosophy and theology in accordance with theirdivergent objects, and by insisting that students should be taught tochoose freely among rival philosophies in accordance with the ends ofhuman happiness, Thomasius’ eclecticism formed an element of hisanti-metaphysical attack on scholasticism (‘sectarian philosophy’).Rather than lacking a method, his eclecticism was based in a method ofcultivating the pluralistic attitude he deemed appropriate to the discus-sion of secular knowledge. Thomasius’ empiricism and nominalismwere thus grounded in powerful ethical–epistemological doctrines – inparticular the ‘voluntarist’ doctrine of man’s incapacity for insight intotranscendent objects – whose role was to ensure that politics and juris-prudence would be approached in terms of their (several) historical dis-positions and purposes.

Next, we may observe that in viewing civil eclecticism from the stand-point of its failure to recover the transcendental conditions of reason,Albrecht’s history obscures the historical point of civil philosophy’sattack on metaphysical scholasticism. In assembling the various ele-ments of his Philosophia Aulica – in particular those designed to precludeaccess to forms of transcendent reason common to God and man –Thomasius was engaged in a frontal assault on university metaphysics.This attack, we recall, was driven by Thomasius’ conviction that themixing of theology and philosophy in university metaphysics was com-plicit with the merging of sacerdotal and civil power in the confessionalstate. In what remains the best analysis of the eclectic ‘syndrome’,Dreitzel provides a helpful sketch for the context in which this attacktook place:

To religious confessionalism there corresponded a type of philosophical con-fessionalism in the higher educational and scientific institutions. [This was]especially pronounced in the restoration of scholasticism following the counter-Reformation monopolisation of philosophical training via the Jesuits atCatholic universities and gymnasiums. The sciences and ‘arts’ were demoted,homogenised, their disciplines polemically repelled or syncretistically assimi-lated – a procedure that was the less maintained the more strongly the scientificdisciplines, anchored in life-practice, developed a life of their own and put intoquestion academic philosophy’s claim to a total interpretation of things. InProtestant Germany, though, it was not the natural sciences that dealt thedeath-blow to Aristotelianism and philosophical confessionalism, but jurispru-dence together with the doctrine of natural law, under the influence ofPufendorf. (Dreitzel , )

Dreitzel’s remarks are of course entirely in keeping with Thomasius’own view of his historical situation in the Foreword to Grotius.

Civil philosophy

Most damaging of all, though – given Albrecht’s treatment of eclec-ticism’s Aufhebung in Wolffian rationalism – is the fact that Thomasiuswas quite familiar with Wolff’s grounding of subjectivity in transcendentreason, but vehemently repudiated it. As we have seen, he warned hisstudents off the intellectualist anthropology contained in metaphysicalrationalism – the doctrines ‘that God’s nature consists in thinking’ and‘that man’s nature consists in thinking and that the welfare and happi-ness of the whole human race consists in the correct arrangement ofthought’ – on the grounds that the cultivation of a transcendent reasonshared with God was wholly unsuited to future jurists and statesmen. Inarguing that Thomasius’ civil philosophy failed to reach the level oftranscendental philosophy (in fact university metaphysics), Albrecht’shistory is thus methodologically inimical to its object. If we recall ourdiscussion of the role of transcendental insight in Albert’s metaphysics,then we obtain a clearer view of its role in Wolff’s. In using the promiseof transcendental insight as the goal of a practice of abstractive self-purification, Wolff may be regarded as refurbishing the central ethos ofmetaphysical scholasticism, in order to defend Schulmetaphysik against itscivil opponents. If this is so, then in presuming that Wolffianism markedthe transition from merely historical philosophies to a properly transcen-dental recovery of the laws of reason, Albrecht’s history itself constitutesan apology for university metaphysics, albeit in its modern post-Kantianform.

. :

Having sketched the limits of the social-theoretic and philosophical–his-torical approaches to civil philosophy and the civil sciences, we may nowturn to some accounts that take us closer to the ‘merciless sobriety’required to address this philosophy in its sheer historicity. These areaccounts for which the political-jurisprudential character of civil philos-ophy signifies not the alienation of expertise from community, but itsemergence from particular expert communities. Further, for theseaccounts, civil philosophy’s emergence through opposition to variouspolitical theologies signifies not its failure to reach beyond historical con-tingency to transcendent philosophy, but the historical contingency ofphilosophy itself.

Such accounts are given not in social theory or philosophical history,but in the historiography of political and jurisprudential thought. In dis-cussing some representative instances of this historiography we shall be

Sources of the civil: politics and law

concerned to clarify a particular question: namely, the relation betweenpolitical and jurisprudential conceptions of the desacralisation of civilgovernance. For this holds the key to understanding what is meant by‘civil’ in civil philosophy. In clarifying the approach of the political his-torians we shall take Richard Tuck’s work on Philosophy and Government– as broadly indicative of the ‘Cambridge school’ view, whileHorst Dreitzel’s study of Henning Arnisaeus represents a characteristi-cally German approach to the empirical history of political thought(Dreitzel ; Tuck a). For a distinctively jurisprudential treatmentof the emergence of a desacralised conception of politics, we shall beindebted to several remarkable essays by Martin Heckel (Heckel–).

Despite his own call for a renewed attention to ‘modern’ natural law,Tuck’s study traces early modern civil philosophy to the intellectual tra-dition of civic humanism and the political milieu of civic republicanism(Tuck ). Like some other members of the Cambridge school, helooks to civic humanism for the intellectual sources of a detheologisedphilosophy, and to the figure of the political humanist – joined to theprince through the roles of educator and political secretary – for thenexus between philosophy and government (Pocock ; Skinner ).Anchoring his account in the early modern commercial republics ofNorthern Italy and the Netherlands, Tuck argues that it was the recov-ery of Ciceronian political humanism in these settings that allowed acivil philosophy to break away from Aristotelian scholasticism, by rein-vesting virtue in the life of active participation in the affairs of the repub-lic (Tuck a, –). Focused in the genre of ‘advice to the prince’, andcombining a liberal constitutionalism with enough scepticism about thetranscendent to focus the mind on the city, this Ciceronian humanismprovides the framework for Tuck’s account of civil philosophy.

Significantly, it is not jurisprudence that provides the tension drivingTuck’s history, but another form of humanism: the ‘new’ humanism thathe characterises through the trio ‘scepticism, Stoicism and raison d’état’.The sources of this humanism lay not in Cicero’s constitutional republi-canism but in the statist histories of Seneca and Tacitus, whose moralscepticism and political pessimism found their answering milieu not in thecommercial republic but in states requiring extreme measures to deal withthe circumstances of religious civil war (Tuck, a –). Despite hisdescriptive treatment of scepticism and Stoicism – explored via Lipsius’programme for cultivating the deportment of ‘constancy’ required to facethe vicissitudes of religious civil war – a certain ambivalence surrounds

Civil philosophy

the third term of Tuck’s new humanism, reason of state. For it is reasonof state – the sovereign’s use of extra-constitutional measures to preservethe state – that conflicts most sharply with the ‘constitutional’ politicalvirtues of Ciceronian humanism.

In relying on this inner tension between constitutional and statistpolitical humanism, Tuck’s history of civil philosophy begins to assumea dialectical character. In fact the ‘civil’ or desacralised politics of civichumanism is seen as oscillating between its two opposed forms. Tuckthus treats the political Aristotelians, Arnisaeus and Clapmar, as assim-ilating Tacitean reason of state to the old Ciceronian humanism. Theydo this via a concept of political order that allows the prince to breaklower-level laws while nonetheless restraining his authority within a nor-mative constitutional order (a, –). Tuck also views the refurbish-ing of scholastic natural law by Molina and Suárez in accordance withthe same dialectic, treating their elaboration of metaphysical lawsbinding on the prince as another version of ‘liberal humanist’ constitu-tionalism (–). Finally, he regards Grotius’ natural law as culminat-ing in the drive to mediate the constitutionalism of republicanhumanism and the statism of its Tacitean rival.

According to Tuck, Grotius’ achievement of this reconciliation in theDe Indis is marked by a reciprocity between the individual’s right to self-preservation and the prince’s right to preserve the state; for the fact thatthese rights are reciprocal – being held together by the political contract– means that the power of the state comes ultimately from the ‘consti-tutional’ consent of individuals (a, –). Tuck concludes,however, by stressing the fragility of this reconciliation. For, after his per-sonal experience of religious persecution at the hands of the DutchCalvinists, Grotius’ writings shifted focus to the theme of the need for astate-enforced religious toleration, culminating in the revised natural lawdoctrine of De Jure Belli ac Pacis (). Here, religion is considered solelyin terms of its political utility, and the preservation of the citizens alsotakes on a purely utilitarian character, becoming the absolute source ofthe state’s power over them (–). With this Tacitean turn, Tuckargues, Grotius forfeits the balance between republican and statisthumanism he had achieved via the natural law notion of consent.

For all that can be learned from it, Tuck’s account of early moderncivil philosophy encounters certain perspectival limits. These arise infact from the manner in which he derives the ‘civil’ character of this phi-losophy – its detheologised form and secular political function – from thetension between the two kinds of political humanism. For these two

Sources of the civil: politics and law

humanisms are in fact the loci for different conceptions of the secular-isation of politics: the ‘Ciceronian’ one grounded in the ethics of civicparticipation in a constitutional republic; and the ‘Tacitean’ conceptiongrounded in the statist pursuit of social peace, using extra-constitutionalmeans to cope with religious civil war. The play between these twosources of civil philosophy’s secularised character gives rise to acertain instability in Tuck’s history, which is the source of its two centrallimitations.

In the first place it leads to a significant ambivalence in Tuck’s con-ception of the political. Despite his endeavour to provide a neutral his-torical contextualisation for the two kinds of humanism, there can belittle doubt that the image of the Ciceronian humanist – defending thevirtue of political participation in the commercial republic – functionsas an implicit norm for Tuck’s history. This image represents both thenormal course for the secularisation of politics, and a model for the roleof political intellectuals. As a result, the statist politics designed to copewith religious civil war tend to lose their historical neutrality and appearinstead as abnormal responses to extreme circumstances. In discussingPibrac’s ‘Tacitean’ defence of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre,Tuck remarks that it ‘illustrates how extreme were the circumstanceswhich called Tacitism into existence and broke Cicero’s hold on human-ists’ (a, ). This tends to prejudge the historical issue, however; for,from a purely historical viewpoint, the capacity for unbridled religiouswarfare is no less normal than the capacity for irenic commercial repub-licanism. Concomitantly, extra-constitutional constructions of politics –in terms of the instrumental exercise of sovereign power to achievesocial peace – are no less normal than constitutionalist conceptions,based on the participation of citizens in the governance of the republic.

To the extent that this instability over the political informs Tuck’sapproach to ‘modern’ natural law – the metonymic discipline of civilphilosophy – then it gives rise to a parallel ambivalence in this contexttoo. In treating Grotius’ natural law as slipping from a constitutionalistinto a statist form – under the pressure of religious oppression – Tuck’saccount tends to skew the manner in which this natural law would betaken up in the German context by Pufendorf and Thomasius. ForPufendorf and Thomasius were elaborating a civil philosophy under his-torical circumstances in which religious civil war was the norm, and inwhich statist conceptions of sovereignty were central to the desacralisa-tion of politics. In his Foreword to Grotius, Thomasius traces these con-ceptions not to ‘scepticism, Stoicism and reason of state’, but to a new

Civil philosophy

form of natural law informed by positive jus publicum or Staatsrecht. Indeveloping their versions of natural law, Pufendorf and Thomasius thusdrew on a conception of the political far removed from both Ciceroniancivic republicanism and Tacitean reason of state. Further, they did sounder circumstances in which German political jurisprudence hadalready played a major role in the desacralisation of politics. In order toclarify further the role of the political and jurisprudential sciences in theformation of civil philosophy we must address both of these issues: thestatist secularisation of politics arising from German political science,and the juridical desacralisation of governance arising from GermanStaatsrecht.

As far as the role of political science is concerned, Horst Dreitzel’sreconstruction of early-seventeenth-century ‘political Aristotelianism’ –in particular the work of the Helmstedt professors Henning Arnisaeusand Hermann Conring – provides a convenient starting point; forDreitzel’s account of Arnisaeus differs from Tuck’s in a manner that issignificant for our larger concerns. Unlike Tuck’s Arnisaeus – whoseconception of political order imposes constitutional normative limits onthe actions of the prince – Dreitzel’s Arnisaeus conceives of politicalorder as the historical form of rule or domination characteristic of a par-ticular kind of society. In fact there can be little doubt that Arnisaeustreats political order not as a constitutional order imposing normativelimits on the prince’s conduct, but as an empirical reality whose mainte-nance constitutes the ‘scientific’ end of the prince’s political action(Dreitzel , –). That this is so is shown most strikingly by the factthat Arnisaeus justifies extra-constitutional political measures – includ-ing political murder – if these were required for the preservation of thestate (–). Tyranny for Arnisaeus is defined not by the breach ofconstitutional norms but in a quite different manner: namely, by theprince’s pursuit of his personal interests in a manner incompatible withhis role as a political expert responsible for diagnosing and eradicatingthreats to the political order.

These local facts are only pointers to the significantly different concep-tion of the political or civil arising from Dreitzel’s account of Arnisaeus,whose fascinating detail we can summarise in three broad points. In thefirst place, while the political Aristotelians were humanists in the sense ofadapting classical texts and wisdom to deal with contemporary problems,they were not humanists in the Cambridge school sense of functioning as‘humanistic–rhetorical’ educators and secretaries to the prince. As pro-fessors of political science at the University of Helmstedt who were also

Sources of the civil: politics and law

advisors to the dukes of Brunswick-Wölfenbuttel, Arnisaeus and Conringdrew their expertise not from Cicero or Tacitus, but from a combinationof Galenic ‘medical empiricism’ and the ‘scientific’ analytic–syntheticmethod of Paduan Aristotelianism (, –). Rather than being seenas virtuous participation in civic affairs, in this intellectual setting politicswas understood as the expert ‘diagnosis’ and elimination of pathologiesthreatening the political order (–).

Second, it may be observed that the secularisation of politics entailedby Arnisaeus’ discipline was not the result of a neo-pagan recovery ofcivic humanism. Rather, it arose from the particular manner in whichhis science of political order was elaborated to meet the threat of relig-ious civil war. In reconstructing politics in terms of the instrumentalmaintenance of any historically existing form of rule, Arnisaeus soughtto render it autonomous of scholastic moral philosophy in general. Inparticular he sought to free politics from its Aristotelian conception asthe form of rule required to realise man’s moral nature or his moral com-munio. ‘Where it is concerned with law-making for citizens or theappointment and deposing of rulers’, Arnisaeus argues, ‘then a [politi-cal] prudence directed to the public good follows neither the commandsof ethics nor those of the church, because these are all exclusively polit-ical matters’ (Dreitzel , ). As a result, Arnisaeus was hostile toboth Althusius’ conception of a sovereignty based in the people’smoral–religious communio, and to all attempts to ground politics intranscendent natural law – whether these arose from Melanchthon’sProtestant natural law or from Suárez’s Jesuit version. In purporting tosubordinate the sovereign’s legislative acts to ‘legal’ norms lying beyondhis positive commands, natural law jeopardised the autonomy of poli-tics and the stability of the political order. Further, it threatened to allowjurists to slip their role as servants of the sovereign’s positive laws andtake on the mantle of moral philosopher. ‘I believe’, Arnisaeus pro-claims, ‘that there is no more accurate distinction than that between law-making [Gesetzgebung] and legal judgment [Rechtsprechung]. Law-makingis not the task of jurists but of kings and statesmen’ (). Arnisaeus thussought to make the concept of the state independent of all moral–phil-osophical and religious foundations, conceiving it as the instrument ofan autochthonous exercise of political domination: ‘We learn and teachpolitics not to gain knowledge through it but so that we can direct thestate in accordance with its precepts . . . In its constituent elements, ofthose who rule and those who obey, however, that state will have beenbuilt by the statesman himself . . . The immediate end of political action

Civil philosophy

is the state itself, because when it is set up in the right way, the humangroups belonging to it live happily’ (). The anti-democratic or ‘abso-lutist’ character of Arnisaeus’ conception of politics was thus not afeudal hangover. Rather it was a direct consequence of the manner inwhich he sought to autonomise politics by expelling the church from thestate, seizing that eternal ecclesiological stalking-horse – the moral com-munity – and transforming it from the source of sovereign power intothe latter’s main target.

Finally, we may observe that the context for Arnisaeus’ and Conring’selaboration of a secular science of politics was not provided by a com-mercial republic, but by one of the several ‘political enterprises’ to befound in Germany prior to the Treaty of Westphalia: namely, the would-be sovereign territorial state of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. In aspiring tothe creation of such a state, specifically through the territorial incorpo-ration of the imperial free city of Brunswick, the dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel engaged in such characteristic undertakings as the politicalintegration of the estates (nobility and clergy), and the ‘cameralistic’development of their territory’s social and economic infrastructure(Schorn-Schütte ). The founding of the Academia Julia in , andthe appointment of the circle of humanist scholars to which Arnisaeuswould belong, was an integral part of these activities. Successive dukesthus saw the university as a source of the clergy and politici required bya territorial state, and regarded the training in politics in particular as ameans for the political integration of the nobility (Baumgart ).Dreitzel thus regards Arnisaeus’ secular political science – whose‘absolute’ character was focused in his rejection of any contract betweensovereign and citizens and his treatment of politics as a technicalproblem of domination – as suited to the construction of an absolutestate under circumstances of confessional conflict. The objective corre-late of Arnisaeus’ profound detheologisation and instrumentalisation ofpolitics was the transformation of Brunswick-Wölfenbuttel’s nobilityinto a political elite, one equipped with a science that would allow it tosubordinate all other religious and political interests to those of the ter-ritorial sovereign (–).

Juridical and natural law doctrines, however, play only a subordinaterole in Dreitzel’s account of the emergence of a desacralised politics, asis the case with the Cambridge school account. In Dreitzel’s case thisseems to arise from his view that natural law in particular has been cap-tured by social theories of the political, several modern versions ofwhich – including Brückner’s – he has submitted to searching criticism

Sources of the civil: politics and law

in an important series of articles (Dreitzel ; Dreitzel ; Dreitzel). In any case, it is clear that Dreitzel regards the construction of anautonomous secular conception of the political by the Helmstedt neo-Aristotelians as the achievement of a non-juridical, purely politicalscience. Natural and positive law play a subordinate role in this setting;the former providing the exercise of power with a juridical form, and thelatter being regarded as one of the regalia or royal rights (Dreitzel ,–). As a result, Dreitzel regards the rise of natural law doctrinesin the second half of the seventeenth century – especially those ofPufendorf and Thomasius – as signalling the lapsing of the ‘scientific’autonomy of politics in favour of a normative theory of sovereignty(Dreitzel ; Dreitzel b).

For all that we have learned from it, however, there are several reasonsfor thinking that Dreitzel’s account overstates the role of Helmstedtpolitical Aristotelianism, and underestimates that of jurisprudence inthe emergence of a desacralised conception of civil governance. First,as Dreitzel himself comments, in addition to neo-Aristotelian politicalscience there were several other intellectual movements seeking to con-struct the autonomy of the political in seventeenth-century Germany,including Lipsian neo-Stoic ‘political psychology’, Protestant politicaljurisprudence (Staatsrecht), and Pufendorf ’s statist natural law andpolitical history. Without doubting Dreitzel’s claim that politicalAristotelianism gave rise to a distinctive conception of the secular auton-omy of politics, there is no need to treat this either as pre-eminent or asincapable of joining the other modes – just as Stolleis argues that Lipsianneo-Stoicism flowed into the practice of Staatsrecht as part of the ethos ofthe political jurists (Stolleis , –). Second, in order to demon-strate the pre-eminence of the political over the juridical, Dreitzel has todo more than show that Arnisaeus and Conring treated positive law asthe form in which the sovereign exercised rule. For, even if Dreitzel isright that utility trumped justice in this secularisation of the political, thisdoes not explain the aptness of German Staatsrecht for such a desacral-ised exercise of sovereignty. As we shall see, this aptness had an indepen-dent source, arising from the manner in which German politics itself hadbeen juridified during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Finally,once we have done justice to the secularising work of positive politicaljurisprudence, then, in the chapter’s final section, we shall see thatPufendorf ’s and Thomasius’ natural law was not in fact a continuationof earlier normative ‘social’ theories of politics. Rather, it was anattempt to transform these theories in the wake of the detheologisation

Civil philosophy

of politics arising from its juridification in Staatsrecht and its instrumen-talisation in absolutist political science. In order to overcome these lim-itations in Dreitzel’s approach, we must move from the political historyof civil philosophy to its juridical historiography.

In , as part of a wide-ranging attack on scholastic moral philos-ophy, Thomasius identified several reasons for Protestant universities toteach German jus publicum or Staatsrecht, as an academic discipline dis-tinct from Roman law. Initially, he argues, learned legists and glossatorssuch as Bardolus and Hotman had attempted to use the Roman-lawconstruction of majestas in order to model the new forms of territorialsovereignty which were emerging in the German Empire. This was toprove insufficient: ‘When though in our time high potentates and theirministers observed that this old method explained little, and that theRespublica Germanica, [while] bearing the title of the Holy RomanEmpire, differs completely from the ancient Roman Republic, then itbecame necessary to separate the doctrine of public law [ Juris publici]from the profession of Justinian law [ Juris Justinian], if one wished . . .to teach it to scholarly youth’ (KTS, –). The reasons for the teachingof the new jus publicum or political jurisprudence were however moreimmediate and more pressing, because they flowed from its use by allparties to formulate the conduct of the Thirty Years War and the peacethat ended it:

When therefore during this war the parties on both sides advanced claims andarguments that were in fact largely grounded in [appeals to] the form of theGerman Empire, this opened the way for the scholars to apply themselves tostudy this more assiduously. And it helped not a little that other [scholars]sought to explicate the same arguments on the basis of their principles, throughother writings and systems of public law [Juris publici] . . . When though afterthe Thirty Years War the electoral princes began to extend the peace treatiesfurther and further, and through this the estates, especially the princes, appar-ently expanded their privileges; and, additionally, when through the instrumen-tum pacis Caesareo-Svecicum . . . the rights of the estates were strengthened –although from both new controversies arose – then many estates have consid-ered it useful that Jus publicum be taught in their universities, either privately orpublicly; so that for any case arising one would have people available skilled inclaiming the rights [Jura] of the high potentates through public writings. (KTS,–)

In his studies of Protestant political jurisprudence, Martin Heckelconfirms and deepens Thomasius’ eye-witness account of the emer-gence of Staatsrecht as an instrument for the regulation of confessionalconflict. In doing so, he elucidates the role of positive jurisprudence in

Sources of the civil: politics and law

the desacralisation of civil governance. At the centre of Heckel’saccount lies the argument that this secularisation was not a symptom ofa general process of rationalisation – whether grounded in theReformation’s division of worldly and spiritual government, the emer-gence of bourgeois society, or the gradual philosophical self-assertion ofhuman reason. Instead, he argues, desacralisation assumed a specificand limited historical form – that of ‘juridification’ – as a result of thefact that Protestant political jurists were forced to deal with the stagger-ing problems of confessional politics and religious civil war in the onlyway they could, by juridifying them (Heckel , –). Heckel thussees the desacralisation of civil governance – the detheologisation ofpolitical thought, the separation of church and state, the emergence ofreligious toleration as the prime ‘liberal’ right – arising neither from asecular–rational philosophy, nor from Roman law as such, but from aunique set of intellectual and historical circumstances. These werecircumstances in which, once it became abundantly clear that the relig-ious wars were incapable of theological adjudication or military-politi-cal termination, Protestant jurists developed a series of measuresdesigned to end the conflicts by securing the coexistence of the confes-sions within the legal framework of the Empire. Beginning with thePeace of Augsburg in , and continuing through to the Treaty ofWestphalia in , the desacralisation of the Imperial frameworkresulting from these measures led to the formation of a ‘non-confes-sional or supra-confessional order of coexistence between the two greatconfessional blocks’ (Heckel , ).

Heckel identifies the central features and effects of these measuresunder five main themes. First, there was an attempt to rescue the Empirefrom the splitting of its religious foundations by reconstituting its unityin secular–political terms. This attempt to salvage a political unity forthe Empire from the fragmentation of the church was, however, onlypartially successful, as both Protestants and Catholics continued to viewthis unity as grounded in the notion of ‘the one true church of JesusChrist’, which both believed themselves to be (Heckel , –).Second, the legal coexistence of the confessions was pursued through aseries of measures designed to establish ‘parity’ between them at thelevel of their representation in the key institutions of imperial govern-ance, the Reichstag and the Reichskammergericht. This mode of establishingequality between the confessions depended on a far-reaching secularisa-tion of the imperial constitution, as all of its various offices, privileges,and protections had now to be distributed in a non-confessional manner,

Civil philosophy

in accordance with a purely ‘instrumental’ political end – social peace(Heckel ). Third, the secularisation (juridification) of politicalgovernance witnessed the emergence of a purely secular-politicalconcept of peace, in place of the religious conception of pax Christiana.This worldly concept of peace required that excommunicated hereticsbe included in peace settlements such as Augsburg. It therefore gave riseto confessional neutrality between states at the level of their Imperialrelations, even while allowing confessionalisation (the Jus Reformandi) toproceed unabated inside state territories, on the principle of Cujus regioejus religio (Heckel , –). Fourth, somewhat paradoxically, the sec-ularisation of the legal framework allowed a greater degree of freedomfor the religious. For theologians could also accept that a purely secularlegally regulated coexistence offered them the best protection from thecovert undermining of their religion by rival theologians (–). Finally,and perhaps most importantly for our present concerns, the progressivesecularisation (juridification) of Imperial church law (Reichskirchenrecht)led to a striking relativisation of its religious content. Given that this lawhad now to apply to two theologically opposed confessions, its centralecclesiological and liturgical concepts could no longer be defined interms of the existing theological systems. This gave rise to a form ofecclesiastical jurisprudence that separated itself from Catholic andProtestant church law by coming to view the governance of religion ina non-theological manner, as a purely political problem. From this secu-larised Reichskirchenrecht would grow the theologically indifferentStaatskirchenrecht of Pufendorf and Thomasius (–).

It was indeed through this protracted elaboration of the political–legalinstruments required to deal with religious civil war that German politi-cal or public law (Staatsrecht) gradually became independent of Romanlaw, employing the latter’s categories as the scaffolding for these greatworks of legal construction, but filling them with contents suited to pur-poses unknown to the Roman legists (Stolleis , –). This doesnot mean, however, that positive law emerged as a neutral instrument foran exercise of power whose secular character arose from a ‘utilitarian’political science of the Helmstedt kind. On the contrary, through its elab-oration as a means of securing the political–legal coexistence of thewarring confessions, German Staatsrecht became the source of aspecifically juridical autonomising of political governance. This helps toclarify the relation between politics and law in Arnisaeus’ absolutist polit-ical science and, indeed, more generally. For it allows us to see that ifArnisaeus’ prince exercised sovereign power in the form of positive law,

Sources of the civil: politics and law

this was because Protestant political jurists had already detachedGerman jus publicum from all higher-level moral and theological ends,thereby allowing it to be treated as a series of the purely instrumentalcommands required to achieve social peace (Schmitt , –).Rather than making a forced choice between politics and law as sourcesof the desacralisation of civil governance, therefore, it is more histori-cally appropriate to treat them as independent strategies converging onthis end – each drawing on the intellectual resources at its disposal inorder to forge instruments capable of meeting the challenge to govern-ance posed by religious civil war (Stolleis , –).

One of the striking results of Heckel’s research is the demonstrationthat many of the central features of a ‘liberal’ civil society – the secular-isation of war and peace, the religious neutrality of law and politics, thegradual acceptance of the ‘permanence of heresy’ which accompaniedthe introduction of religious toleration – were not the result of a line oftranscendent philosophical reflection whose culmination would come inthe democratic natural law theories of the Aufklärung. We learn ratherthat they arose as unplanned consequences of a whole series of juridi-cal improvisations undertaken by anonymous political jurists seeking thepolitical–legal bases of social peace. Conversely, when we examine con-temporary arguments on the need to ground positive Staatsrecht in a‘higher’ natural law – such as Althusius’ argument that unless it werefounded in a natural law containing the Decalogue human society (‘sym-biosis’) would be ‘a beastly congregation of vice-ridden men’ – we findthat they are in fact attempts by political metaphysicians to undo thesecularising effects of political jurisprudence (Althusius , ).

If, therefore, positive political jurisprudence was the source of anindependent juridical secularisation of civil governance – and if thisprocess of deconfessionalisation and instrumentalisation was a source of‘moral’ consequences that we now identify with the emergence of a plu-ralistic civil society – then we might expect that this role of political juris-prudence would be reflected in the early modern civil philosophy ofPufendorf and Thomasius. This is in fact the case. For what distin-guishes their civil philosophy from political metaphysics – and what dis-tinguishes their ‘profane’ natural law from neoscholastic natural law – isjust this fact: that it was elaborated in order render ‘practical philosophy’(university ethics and politics) capable of reflecting the profound secu-larisation of religious and political culture that had been taking place inthe political–jurisprudential sphere.

Civil philosophy

.

Having disarmed the sociological and metaphysical reductions of civilphilosophy, and located it at the confluence of the great political andjurisprudential desacralisings of civil government, we may conclude ourexposition of Thomasius’ Foreword to Grotius. Taking the form of abrief history of natural law, Thomasius’ Foreword offers us a strikinginsight into the cultural role and significance that he and Pufendorfenvisaged for their reconstructed version of this discipline. Nothingcould be clearer, Thomasius begins, than the difference betweenrevealed and natural truths – the former coming through faith and rev-elation and leading man to eternal beatitude, the latter arising in man’sunderstanding and guiding him to temporal happiness: ‘Herein lies thesimple and clear distinction between theology and philosophy orbetween theology and the three other faculties: theology is concernedwith the light of grace and teaches in accordance with it, jurisprudence,medicine, and philosophy teach in accordance with the natural light’(VG, ). Yet, he continues, nothing has been more responsible for derail-ing man’s natural pursuit of a long and happy earthly life than themixing and confusion of these two kinds of truth; for from this havearisen shameful exercises of priestcraft with all their attendant misery ofreligious tyranny and conflict.

It is the ‘scholars’ who have been most responsible for this grievousconfusion, Thomasius argues; particularly those who inherited thepagan philosophical conception of nature and mixed it with theChristian doctrine of creation – that is, the metaphysicians. Ensnared by‘Platonic fables’, the metaphysicians not only produced a bastard philo-sophical–theological conception of a creation divided into visible andinvisible things, they also used their alleged insight into transcendentbeing as the basis for doctrine-mongering and religious oppression: ‘Onewas not content to present Christians with errors that contradicted thesound reason and senses of normal men. Through heresy-hunting andthe coercion of conscience one forced these errors on the people as nec-essary articles of faith’ (VG, ). Above all it was the incorporation ofAristotelian and Platonic metaphysics in the development of scholasticphilosophy that formalised this corrupting mixture of philosophy andtheology, leading to the progressive ruin of ethics, statecraft, and naturallaw. In this regard, Thomasius’ Foreword belongs to the genre of ‘histo-ries of morality’, whose role in forming an intellectual bulwark for the

Civil philosophy and profane natural law

new natural law has been investigated by Timothy Hochstrasser(Hochstrasser , –).

In a striking instance of his analysis of the corrupting effects of meta-physical doctrines, Thomasius divides their proponents into two kinds,the ‘orthodox’ (Rechtmeinenden) and the ‘esoterics’ (Geheimen). The formerexercise power through the public imposition of articles of faith, thelatter through a secret practice of mystical spiritual direction. In pur-porting to know the divine through natural (pagan) philosophical means,each of the two forms of metaphysics – orthodox Schulmetaphysik and theclandestine pursuit of mystical enlightenment – amounts to a ‘secrettheology’:

Both therefore misuse the natural light. The orthodox do so in that they over-step the limits of reason, seeking through its powers to explain things that Godhas held it not necessary to reveal, overly neglecting, however, the will and itsimprovement. The esoterics do so in that they make the powers of the willgreater than they are, and, on the other hand, diminish the light of the under-standing too much. Both complain about the pagans and pagan philosophy, andyet both are descended from pagan wisdom and its disciples. The orthodox infact [descend] from refining Platonic disputations regarding the divine being,the esoterics though from the Platonic doctrine regarding the end of truewisdom: namely, union with God through the way of purification and enlight-enment. (VG, )

Further, both use their secret theology to engage in priestcraft – the illicitexercise of authority through the claim to privileged religious insight –to the ruin of true Christianity:

So everything leads either to idle speculation or enthusiasm and, thereby, simpleactive Christianity is forgotten. Both of them impress upon the laity that givingis more blessed than taking, although for them this means that taking is moreblessed than giving. Both seek to strengthen the pretences of their doctrinesthrough holy fraud, through the fabrication of many evidently false histories,and through false miracles . . . Finally, we can add that both classes rob their lis-teners of the right use of their God-given reason. The orthodox [do so] bybinding their listeners to their formulas, the esoterics by binding them to innerinspirations. So they spread the two most grievous prejudices of the humanunderstanding, the former [the orthodox] that of human authority, the latter[the esoterics] that of untimely rashness. (VG, –)

Thomasius is particularly concerned with the effects of Schulmetaphysikon the civil sciences of ethics, politics, and natural law, regarding it asthe source of their confessional corruption and assimilation to scholas-tic moral philosophy:

Civil philosophy

It is certain that the [teaching of] ethics by the first philosophers in the univer-sities founded by the Pope was so bad that, so to speak, one could not entice adog behind an oven with it. The profession of statesman first arose long afterthat. In his account of the papal monarchy, Herr Pufendorf has remarked thatit belongs to the secrets of papist states either not to teach politics in the univer-sities or to do so only in accordance with the interests of the clergy. Because ofthis even the name of politics itself has been made suspect, and a taint of shameattached to it. More should be said about this elsewhere, because politics andnatural law or ethics [Moral] – which are in fact markedly different – were oftenconfused. (VG, )

Several brave and wise men had attempted to redress this situation –among them Pierre Bayle, Hermann Conring, Jean Barbeyrac, and,most notably, Samuel Pufendorf – attacking the scholastic anthropolo-gies and cosmologies and pointing the way towards a new conception ofpolitics and natural law. Their efforts, though, have been hampered bythe scholastic domination of the universities. In the law faculties thedominance of jus civile has been a retarding factor; for this has meant thatthe glossators have been unable to separate natural law from Romanlaw, and thereby provide it with the political form required by recent his-torical circumstances. Things are even worse in the theology faculties,however. For here natural law has been ensnared by the full metaphysi-cal confusion of theology and philosophy, being in effect transformedinto a branch of moral philosophy and losing its civil vocation altogether(VG, ). While Thomasius castigates the Jesuits (Vitoria, Molinas,Suárez) for this corruption, he is equally scathing of the Protestant theol-ogy faculties. Here too the ‘secret theology’ of Aristotelian and Platonicmetaphysics had crept back in, allowing the Protestant theologians andphilosophers to follow the Catholics in assimilating natural law to meta-physics and moral philosophy: ‘As a result, at the beginning of the seven-teenth century, the doctrine of virtue and vice, or of the differencebetween good and evil, of the natural law and such like, was in awretched and deathly condition, among both the Catholics and theProtestants’ (VG, ).

Turning at last to the subject of his Foreword, Thomasius writes thatit was Grotius’ task and honour to begin cleansing the Augean stables ofscholastic metaphysics and natural law. He characterises Grotius as aman who had himself held political office and had experienced at firsthand the monster of religious authority. In his treatment of ‘the law ofwar and peace’, Grotius had been the first to show that conflicts betweenprinces could not be decided on the basis of Justinian or canon law but

Civil philosophy and profane natural law

only through natural law. In doing so he separated divine, universal,mosaic, and human laws from each other: ‘In a word, Grotius was theinstrument that served God’s wisdom in lifting the long-lasting confusionof natural and supernatural light by making a beginning’ (VG, ).Perhaps keeping in mind the fundamental corrections that Pufendorfhad made to Grotius’ construction of natural law, Thomasius concludeshis Foreword by observing that Grotius represented only the dawning oftruth from the long night of scholastic error.

Modern commentators – particularly those wedded to post-Kantianphilosophical history – have great difficulty in understanding the separ-ation of knowledge and faith in Thomasius’ civil philosophy, or themanner in which it combines a secularising empiricism and a ‘spiritual-istic’ (anti-sacramental) theology. In treating this as a failure to reconcilephilosophy and theology – and in treating this failure as destined to beovercome in the great line of German metaphysics running fromLeibniz through Wolff to Kant – they overlook two signal issues. First,they fail to observe that the reconciliation of philosophy and theologyactually pre-dated Thomasius; that it was the defining mark of the meta-physical ‘confusion’ that he set out to destroy; and that he had carefullydiagnosed the ‘secret theology’ of Aristotelian and Platonic metaphysicson which this reconciliation depended. They also overlook the fact thatThomasius linked the confusion of philosophy and theology in thissecret theology to the merging of civil and religious authority in confes-sional society. These were joined by the ‘priestcraft’ of the theologiansand philosophers, and in particular by their claim to be able to admin-ister a philosophical salvation to the laity through speculative and self-purifying access to the Platonic intelligibles. In short, far from failing toreach the transcendental reconciliation of philosophy and theology inthe great line of German metaphysics, Thomasius identified this recon-ciliation with the catastrophic fusion of civil and religious governance inthe confessional state. He located the nexus between university meta-physics and the monstrosity of a religious state in the exalted deportmentof the academic theologians and philosophers – the clerisy – who pur-ported to govern others on the basis of their access to a domain of pureintellection.

In fact, the reshaping of the relations between the civil sciences andtheology which lay at the heart of Pufendorf ’s and Thomasius’ naturallaw arose not from their philosophical failure but from the failure of uni-versity philosophy; that is, its failure to comprehend the profound trans-formation in the relations between civil and religious governance that

Civil philosophy

had already been achieved in the domain of politics and jurisprudence.The comprehension of this transformation was to be the task of the civilphilosophy developed by Pufendorf and Thomasius, in particular oftheir refashioned natural law. Rather than signalling their failure tobecome metaphysicians, the fact that their natural law contains a statistconception of politics and law alongside an unreconciled ‘spiritualist’theology points to a quite different historical reality. It indicates themanner in which Pufendorf and Thomasius sought to destroy meta-physics so that they could transform practical philosophy in accordancewith the juridical and political secularisation of civil governance. Thistransformation was dependent on two fundamental and interdependentstrategies which in fact form the basis of Pufendorf ’s and Thomasius’civil philosophy.

The first of these strategies concerns the manner in which theirprofane natural law separates the exercise of civil authority from thepursuit of moral regeneration. In excluding the question of truth fromthe great religious peace treaties, political jurisprudence had not onlydetheologised politics, it had in effect ‘detranscendentalised’ it; for thekey to the peaceful legal coexistence of the rival confessions lay in thesovereign power’s complete indifference to their transcendent truthclaims. This in turn required the recalibration of politics and law asinstrumental disciplines whose object was restricted to political order assuch. The detranscendentalising of politics and law was reflected in theanti-metaphysical voluntarism of the new civil natural law. Pufendorfand Thomasius denied that natural law could be founded in thetranscendent truths of man’s moral nature or moral community,grounding it instead in his limitless capacity for mutual self-destruction.This supported a conception of politics and law understood in terms ofthe commands of a sovereign power issued for the sole end of maintain-ing social peace. As we shall see, it also led to the fundamental doctrinethat the sovereign power had the absolute right to settle religious contro-versies, by force if necessary; but only if they threatened social peace andonly if this power remained completely indifferent to the conflictingreligious truths.

At the same time, because this detranscendentalising of politicsresulted from a specific (political–jurisprudential) kind of desacralisation– and was not the result of a general philosophical or social process ofrationalisation – it did not lead to a wholesale secularisation or instru-mentalisation of all social spheres. On the contrary, in accordancewith a second strategy, the civil philosophers sought to remove ‘true

Civil philosophy and profane natural law

Christianity’ from political supervision by treating it in terms of theinformulable and unenforceable faith of an ‘invisible church’. Thisaccounts for the ambivalent attitude to religion in the new natural law.To the extent that it is considered in its public ecclesiological sense, thenreligion is strictly subject to political utility, with a refashionedStaatskirchenrecht being the source of laws designed to neutralise the inde-pendent power of the churches and transform them into instruments ofsocial pedagogy. To the extent that religion was regarded in its transcen-dent salvific sense, however, then Thomasius in particular sought to freeit from all forms of authority – clerical and political – treating it as amatter of private faith and grace. In so doing, of course, he was simul-taneously removing politics and law from all religious obligations.

The instrumentalising and detranscendentalising of politics and law,accompanied by the ambivalent ‘privatising’ of religion, signalled a pro-found reconfiguration of the relations between civil and religiousgovernance. It gave rise to an outlook in which the exercise of civilauthority would only be considered legitimate to the extent that it wasindifferent to transcendent truth, and in which the pursuit of transcen-dent truth would be considered legitimate only to the extent that itinvolved no exercise of civil authority and had no impact on socialpeace. Pufendorf and Thomasius were amongst the first to formulatethis new outlook, which lay at the heart of their civil philosophy.

This combination of secular civil sciences and spiritualistic theologywas the instrument and outcome of a radical reorientation of the aca-demic–intellectual field, giving rise to the outlook of civil philosophy. Onthe one hand, it meant that the civil sciences would only be consideredlegitimate to the extent that they eschewed revealed or transcendentobjects and restricted themselves to empirically available ones. On theother hand, it dictated that the transcendent objects of theology wouldbe considered legitimate only to the extent that they were treated asobjects of faith, completely inaccessible to natural philosophical knowl-edge. This outlook, while it employed the traditional Lutheran ‘dualist’formulations regarding the gap between reason and revelation, knowl-edge and faith, was not oriented to a metaphysical delimitation or recon-ciliation of the two domains. On the contrary, by inheriting thepolitical–jurisprudential imperative to separate the spheres of civil andreligious governance, and through its spiritualistic rejection of allattempts to provide either a transcendent basis for the civil sciences or arational basis for theological doctrine, the outlook of the civil philoso-phers was dedicated to the radical decoupling of the civil and theological

Civil philosophy

knowledge, and the consequent destruction of university metaphysics.This of course is the viewpoint informing Thomasius’ Foreword toGrotius.

It will already be clear that Protestant university metaphysics and itsnatural law adopted diametrically opposed positions to civil philosophyin both of the above regards. In the first place, university metaphysicsremained committed to anchoring the civil sciences of ethics, law, andpolitics in transcendent truth, through philosophical reflection on their‘rational’ foundations. Whether in the form of Alberti’s recovery ofdivine law, Leibniz’s recovery of the transcendent concept of justice,Wolff’s recursion to the intellectual possibilia that underlie all possiblethings, or Kant’s ascent to a transcendental moral law underlying allempirical ethics and politics – German university metaphysics would becharacterised by a relentless drive to overcome civil philosophy’s separ-ation of the empirical–civil and the transcendent–religious sciences. Itsought thereby to re-establish the unity of Christian academic culture atwhose centre sat the privileged figure of the metaphysician himself, pre-serving a quasi-religious disposition for the civil sciences through his ownself-purifying recovery of their transcendent grounds.

Secondly, university metaphysics and its natural law rejected civil phi-losophy’s uncoupling of the spheres of civil and spiritual governance.Metaphysicians from the Martinis to Kant refused to accept theindifference of sovereign power to moral truth – thereby rejecting theautonomy of the political – with Kant commenting on how ‘terrible’ itwas that ‘no philosopher has yet been able to bring into agreement withmorality . . . the fundamental principles of the great societies calledstates’ (., RRT, ). At the same time, these metaphysicians remainedcommitted to reconciling Christian theology and metaphysical philoso-phy, with Leibniz, Wolff, and Kant all producing elaborate ‘philosophi-cal theologies’. In doing so they continued to seek a ‘rational faith’capable of reunifying Christianity and forming the basis of a ‘moralcommonwealth’. As a result, they remained wedded to a political escha-tology, conceiving the state via the figure of the church, or the ‘kingdomof God on earth’.

We may conclude the first part of our study, therefore, by observingthat the metaphysical and civil philosophy found in early modernGerman universities represented independent and opposed responses tothe reshaping of civil and religious governance that was taking place inthe political–jurisprudential domain. Far from emerging as a failure toachieve the metaphysical synthesis of philosophy and theology – a

Civil philosophy and profane natural law

failure that would force it to combine an amoral statism and an irrationaltheology – civil philosophy emerged as a deliberate repudiation of thewhole programme of metaphysical reconciliation, patiently uncouplingthe civil sciences from theology in order to separate political authorityand religious truth. For its part, university metaphysics remained consti-tutionally committed to the unification of philosophy and theology –albeit on the basis of increasingly ‘secular’ conceptions of the transcen-dental domain – and refused to renounce the ecclesiological desire for astate governed in accordance with transcendent moral principles. Theserival intellectual cultures were neither mediated by a dialectic internal toa universal human intellect nor unified by a singular form of truth.Rather they confronted each other as divergent modes of forming par-ticular intellectual deportments, each characterised by its own way ofacceding to truth. Such is the manner in which we shall approach thecivil philosophy of Pufendorf and Thomasius, and the metaphysics ofLeibniz and Kant, treating the works of these philosophers as represen-tative instances of a still-unresolved divergence in the fundamentalforms of intellectual culture.

Civil philosophy

Civil and metaphysical philosophy

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Leibniz’s political metaphysics

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If the conflict between civil and metaphysical philosophy represented amajor fissure in the academic–intellectual culture of early modernGermany, then one of its central texts is Leibniz’s celebrated Opinion onthe Principles of Pufendorf. Written in at the request of the abbot ofLocum (Molanus), this text was first published as an appendix to JeanBarbeyrac’s French edition of Pufendorf ’s De Officio (). Here it wasinterspersed with Barbeyrac’s adjudicatory comments, intended tomediate the conflict for the Huguenot Diaspora (Barbeyrac ). In hismonitory discussion of the De Officio, Leibniz comments that while heagrees with Pufendorf ’s derivation of duties from laws, Pufendorf hasno idea of the depth of natural laws or the scope of the duties theyembrace. Leibniz expands this comment with the following remarks:

But my analysis of this is scarcely recognised by our author, [namely] that in auniversal society governed by God every virtue . . . is comprehended among theobligations of universal justice; and not only external acts, but also all of oursentiments are regulated by a certain rule of law; thus those who are worthy ofbeing philosophers of law [must] consider not only concord among men[humanae tranquilitatis], but also friendship with God, the possession of whichassures us of an enduring felicity. (PW, )

These remarks provide a useful pointer to the central differencesbetween the natural law doctrines of Pufendorf and Leibniz. As we shallin more detail in chapter , Pufendorf had indeed sought to limit naturallaw duties to those derivable from the end of human tranquillity. He haddone so in order to separate civil authority from man’s pursuit of his‘enduring felicity’ or salvation, thereby restricting law to ‘external’ orcivil actions, to the exclusion of all concern with man’s inner moral orreligious purity. Moreover, in disputing Pufendorf ’s account of the‘efficient cause’ of natural law, Leibniz clearly identifies the rival theo-logical–political underpinnings of their divergent constructions:

‘[Pufendorf], indeed, does not find [the cause of natural law] in thenature of things and in the precepts of right reason which conform toit, which emanate from the divine understanding, but (what will appearto be strange and contradictory) in the command of a superior’ (PW, ).

Against Pufendorf, Leibniz insists that justice is not to be restricted tothe governance of external actions in accordance with the end of civilpeace, being grounded instead in God’s salvific governance of the uni-verse, which extends to man’s inner moral condition. For, in Leibniz’smetaphysical philosophy, man shares in God’s intellection of the ‘sub-stantial forms’ or ‘perfections’ responsible for the universe’s intelligibleand moral order: ‘Neither the norm of conduct itself, nor the essence ofthe just, depends on [God’s] free decision, but rather on eternal truths,objects of the divine intellect, which constitute, so to speak, the essenceof divinity itself; and it is right that our author [Pufendorf] is reproachedby theologians when he maintains the contrary’ (PW, ). According tothis neo-Platonic metaphysics, wisdom is knowledge of the forms or per-fections which are the source of the universe’s teleological order. Toknow the rational forms or perfections, however, one must love them; forin loving or finding happiness in the perfections man perfects himself –realises his telos as a rational being – and thereby qualifies himself to dis-pense justice as one in whom love and wisdom are combined.

Leibniz’s metaphysical conception of justice, justitia est caritas sapientis– justice is the love of the sage – thus constitutes a thoroughgoing con-trast with and self-conscious repudiation of Pufendorf ’s anti-metaphys-ical or civil conception. For, according to Pufendorf, the natural lawduties find their effective source not in the reasons of a quasi-divine intel-lect but in the commands of a political superior. How, though, shouldwe approach these rival natural law doctrines? In what historiographicspace are they most appropriately located?

Seen from the viewpoint of the history of moral philosophy, thenatural law doctrines of Leibniz and Pufendorf appear as competingattempts to provide a rational basis for political duties or, equivalently, amoral basis for the exercise of civil authority. Historians writing from thisstandpoint regard Leibniz’s natural law as philosophically superior toPufendorf ’s, despite the fact that Leibniz wrote nothing of the magni-tude of Pufendorf ’s De Jure Naturae et Gentium, or even of its epitome, theDe Officio. As we have already noted, some of these historians regard bothphilosophers as destined for eclipse with the appearance of Kant’s moralphilosophy (Schmidt-Biggemann a; Schneewind ; Schneewind). Others, though, with greater sympathy for Leibniz’s neo-Platonic

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

metaphysics, focus more directly on its supposed philosophical superior-ity to Pufendorf ’s ‘Hobbesian’ perspective. They regard Leibniz’sattempt to provide civil authority with a metaphysical–moral basis asintellectually and morally preferable to Pufendorf ’s alleged reduction ofright to might (Barreau ; Riley ; Sève ; Sève ).

Viewing Leibniz’s relation to Pufendorf in these terms, however,underestimates the degree to which it was shaped by the religious andpolitical circumstances of post-Westphalian Germany. In his discussionof Pufendorf ’s theological writings, Detlef Döring observes that boththinkers were attempting to influence Protestant Religionspolitik (Döring, –). In writing his Jus Feciale Divinum sive de Consensu et DissensuProtestantium Exercitatio Posthuma (The Divine Feudal Law, or On Consensus andDissensus among Protestants, ), Pufendorf sought to provide a coretheology acceptable to Lutherans and Calvinists, in accordance with thereligious policy of Brandenburg-Prussia. Leibniz, however, had neverdeviated from his visionary quest to reunite the whole of Christendomaround an agreed philosophical theology – his own (Döring a).Leibniz’s stinging attacks on Pufendorf ’s theology and natural law werethus in part driven by personal rivalry – Leibniz resented the high officePufendorf had obtained at the Brandenburg court – but, more impor-tantly, by a fundamental difference in their cultural and political out-looks. This difference, as Döring comments, is given symptomaticexpression in their radically opposed views of the discipline of meta-physics: ‘Is a greater opposition thinkable than that between Leibniz’spride in having already penetrated the depths of metaphysics in hisyouth, and Pufendorf ’s thanking fate for having allowed him the timelyrecognition that metaphysics is nothing other than a useless mish-mashof empty concepts?’ (Döring , ).

In the face of the modern proclivity to treat Leibniz as simply a betterphilosopher than Pufendorf, Döring’s comments are a pointer to justhow deeply Leibnizian metaphysics were embedded in a specific set ofreligious and political conflicts – particularly the conflict with civil phi-losophy. We have already indicated that Leibniz’s metaphysics may beregarded as a characteristic neo-Platonic improvisation on seventeenth-century Protestant university metaphysics. Despite the important doctri-nal shifts involved here, there are, we have suggested, importantcontinuities at the level of the culture of metaphysics itself; for Leibnizand those who came after him continued to cultivate the spiritualauthority of a personage with access to the divine–intelligible order ofthe cosmos and, on this basis, to claim authority in the civil sphere. This

Introduction

distinctive cultural–political comportment holds the key to understand-ing Leibniz’s attack on Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy, which was dedicatedto destroying just this nexus of intellectual and civil authority in themetaphysical personage. It is also a pointer to the larger conflict framingthis skirmish: that between the civil desacralisation of politics and thestrategy of rationalist resacralisation being pursued by the metaphysi-cians.

In fleshing out these suggestions, this chapter offers an account ofLeibniz’s metaphysics as a specific kind of intellectual self-culture, oneembedded in the neo-Platonic anthropology and cosmology, and dedi-cated to the cultivation of a socially authoritative moral persona. Thisapproach results in a view of Leibniz’s philosophical theology andnatural law quite unlike that offered by the historians of moral philoso-phy, but one more attuned to the religious and political circumstances inwhich his metaphysics did battle with Pufendorf ’s and Thomasius’ civilphilosophy.

. S C H U L M E TA P H YS I K

In its neo-Platonic pursuit of the ‘intelligibles’ underlying the empiricalworld, Leibniz’s metaphysics represents a characteristic early modern‘rationalist’ transformation of the scholastic inheritance, comparablewith Descartes’ and Spinoza’s. It is helpful to view this transformationin terms of an intellectual spectrum. Scholasticism may be characterisedin terms of a particular tension: between the drive to elaborate a con-ception of substance or being common to God, man, and world, and theequally strong insistence on the gulf separating the divine and humanrealms. This gave rise to a variety of ‘orthodox’ metaphysical theologies,in accordance with several strategies for responding to the tension, as wehave seen in Walter Sparn’s account of Lutheran and Calvinist univer-sity metaphysics. In its positing of a single domain of intelligibles, opento both the divine and the human intellect, early modern neo-Platonismoccupies the rationalist end of the metaphysical spectrum. Leibniz’smetaphysics may thus be regarded as representing a particular histori-cal negotiation of the path from the scholastic to the rationalist poles ofthis spectrum.

We obtain a helpful overview of this transition in a short but pregnantessay by Bogumil Jasinowski. Jasinowski sees Leibniz’s philosophy emerg-ing from the interplay between two distinct metaphysical traditions,

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

Christian scholasticism and Renaissance neo-Platonism (Jasinowski, –). Central to Leibniz’s rationalist transformation of his scho-lastic inheritance are two interlinked doctrines that Jasinowski calls pan-cosmism and gnoseomonism. Described by Jasinowski as a ‘metaphysicalfaith’ originating in Chaldea, pancosmism is the doctrine that theentirety of the world is contained in each of its parts. This is the organi-cist teaching that gave rise to both the search for occult relations betweenthings and the pursuit of mathematical formulas capable of expressingthese relations. Gnoseomonism is Jasinowski’s term for the ‘epistemo-logical’ concomitant of pancosmism. This is the doctrine that, just asthere is a single order of pancosmic being, so there is a single principleof knowledge informing God, man, and the world. The prime instanceof this principle is the Platonic Idea, acceded to via pure intellectualintuition rather than discursive reason, and giving rise to empirical thingsthrough a process of devolution into the world of the senses. The rever-sal of this process finds expression in the doctrine of a self-purifyingascent from confused sensory perceptions to their source in the timelessforms or intelligences.

Jasinowski sees Leibniz’s philosophy as effecting a pancosmic andgnoseomonistic transformation of scholastic dualism and, in this regard,his account agrees with fundamental studies by Heimsoeth and Merlan(Heimsoeth ; Merlan ). Leibniz’s monadology is a typicalexpression of this transformation. The monad or ‘spiritual atom’ is botha substance originating in God’s creative intellection of the universe yet– in the case of the soul or ‘intelligent monad’ – also contains the total-ity of substances in a pancosmic manner, through its own intellection,which mirrors God’s. From this viewpoint, the pantheistic and deistictendencies of Leibniz’s metaphysics arise from this neo-Platonic collaps-ing of the scholastic dualism of divine and human being. This interpre-tation echoes Sparn’s account of the Platonic provenance of ‘Calvinist’rationalist doctrines, particularly the doctrine of regenerate man’scapacity to participate in God’s thinking of things through contempla-tive ascent to the divine ideas (Sparn , –).

It is somewhat surprising then that Patrick Riley should regardLeibniz’s neo-Platonic conception of justice – ‘the charity of the wise’ –as indicative of the harmonisation of Christian theology and scientificrationality: ‘In the end one can say that Leibniz preserves theChristian/Pauline notion of charity as one side of justice, that he doesnot altogether secularise the idea of justice, but that (at the same time)the stress on “the wise” is redolent of both ancient Platonic rationalism

From ‘Schulmetaphysik’ to rationalist metaphysics

and modern scientific Enlightenment’ (Riley , ). In fact, like its‘Calvinist’ prototype, Leibniz’s conception of enlightenment throughcontemplative ascent to the intelligibles may itself be regarded as a formof ‘metaphysical faith’ – or spiritual self-cultivation – rather than as ananticipation of science; for we shall see that this ascent takes place notthrough experimental method but via a practice of intellectual self-purification. In fact, Leibniz’s mode of acceding to the intelligibles or‘perfections’ is symptomatic of the ‘secret theology’ that so concernedThomasius, as we gather from Leibniz’s claim that: ‘The divine perfec-tions are concealed in all things, but very few know how to discover themthere. Hence there are many who are learned without being illumined,because they believe not God or the light but only their earthly teachersor their external senses and so remain in contemplation of imperfec-tions’ (Lm, ). Similarly, as Heimsoeth has shown, rather than antici-pating experimental biology, Leibniz’s interest in the microscopicexamination of pond amoebae was driven by his pancosmic (anti-Democritean) desire to prove that even the smallest particles of mattercontained the living universe within them (Heimsoeth , –).

Rather than indicating an epochal transition to a ‘modern scientificEnlightenment’, Leibniz’s metaphysics is thus better seen as a character-istic seventeenth-century Platonistic modification of ProtestantSchulmetaphysik. In this regard it is symptomatic of a significant parting ofthe cultural ways available to seventeenth-century Protestant intellectu-als. Other intellectuals, we recall, responded to the Lutheran dualism ofdivine and human being in a quite different manner. Rather than col-lapsing the two levels into a single form of reason or intellection, politi-cal scientists (Arnisaeus and Conring) and civil philosophers (Pufendorfand Thomasius) intensified the separation of divine being and humanthought as a means of naturalising and objectifying the latter. Thisenabled them to treat the sciences of politics and law as governed byspecific empirical objects and technical–formal methods. By contrast, inmaintaining the classical religious–metaphysical conception of thedivine intellection of the essences, while ‘deconsecrating’ the manner inwhich these would be acceded to, Leibniz was turning his back on theconstruction of autonomous empirical sciences and improvising the‘modern’ form of philosophia Christiana. At the very least, then, there areseveral paths into the ‘modern scientific Enlightenment’, and these donot lead to the same destination.

In order to prepare the way for our discussion of the form and circum-stances in which Leibniz undertook his Platonic modification of

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

Protestant Schulmetaphysik, we need to supplement Jasinowski’s schematicaccount by bringing forward two of the results of our earlier discussionof university metaphysics and civil philosophy. In the first place, we needto recall the central lesson of Thomassen’s discussion of metaphysics asa particular Lebensform (see section . above). Thomassen, we recall,treats the pursuit of the intelligibles not as an epistemological necessity,but as the goal of a way of life grounded in a contingent moral anthro-pology. This is the metaphysical anthropology of man as the beingwhose spark of divine intellect permits him to participate in God’s crea-tive intuition of the substantial forms, even if his corporeal embodimentmeans that to achieve this end he must rise above the discursive–sensoryforms of human understanding through self-purifying abstraction.Despite its more explicitly Platonic character, we find the same anthro-pology at the heart of Leibniz’s metaphysics – in the figure of the ‘ratio-nal monad’, with its inner intellectual spontaneity and its outer sensorypassivity, and with its driving desire for intellectual self-perfection(Heimsoeth ). We shall therefore approach Leibniz’s monadology asan improvisation on the longstanding metaphysical anthropology ofhomo duplex. Inheriting the latter’s ‘ascetic’ function and moral prestige,the monadology is also a means of grooming the exalted and authorita-tive intellectual deportment of the metaphysician.

Next, we need to bring forward the results of our preliminary dis-cussion of the relation between university metaphysics and the civilphilosophy of Pufendorf and Thomasius (see section .). In theirreconstruction of natural law – grounded in the Epicurean anthropol-ogy of self-restraint rather than the Platonic one of self-realisation –Pufendorf and Thomasius sought to uncouple the spheres of politicalgovernance and religious formation through a radical separation of pol-itics, law, and ethics from theology. They did so by treating the formeras objects of sciences whose epistemological horizons were set by thestate’s pursuit of social peace, and the latter as a discipline rooted in aprivate faith lying beyond the reach of all philosophical explication anddoctrinal formalisation. Acting in accordance with the deep-seated de-sacralisation of politics that had been taking place in the political–juris-prudential domain, the civil philosophers sought to eliminate thepolitical enforcement of religious life-styles by excluding transcendenttruth and value from the ‘civil kingdom’. This meant that the ‘kingdomof truth’ could only be entered through private devotion, not teachablemetaphysics.

Conversely, outraged by Pufendorf ’s and Thomasius’ desacralising

From ‘Schulmetaphysik’ to rationalist metaphysics

philosophy, the university metaphysicians continued to seek the recon-ciliation of theology and philosophy and, on this basis, to ground polit-ical governance in some version of Christian moral perfectionism.Lutheran political metaphysicians such as Alberti, Veltheim, Placcius,and Prasch thus continued to offer metaphysical explications of centraltheological doctrines. They also refurbished ‘ante-bellum’ neoscholasticnatural law, according to which sovereignty and positive law are con-strained by transcendental rational and moral laws. Rather than signify-ing his dialectical overcoming of the civil separation of theology and thepolitical sciences, the fact that Leibniz sought to resolve religious conflictthrough a trans-confessional philosophical theology indicates his close-ness to the anti-political strategy adopted by the university metaphysi-cians. Similarly, rather than solving a philosophical problem inherent inthe civil decoupling of positive law and moral philosophy, Leibniz’s re-establishment of a continuum between these domains is a weaponagainst the (political–juridical) desacralisation of civil governance. Asthe instrument of a new ‘rationalist’ resacralisation of politics and law,Leibniz’s metaphysics is also a means of preserving the intellectual andcivil authority of the Christian philosopher in a new form – that of the‘anti-positivist’ critical intellectual. These at least are the propositionsthat we shall defend in our discussion of the ‘ascetic’ character ofLeibniz’s metaphysics, and the ‘neo-confessional’ character of his phil-osophical theology and natural law.

.

The key to understanding the self-formative character of Leibniz’smetaphysics lies in the reciprocal relation it establishes between knowl-edge of the ‘perfections’ (intelligibles) and the perfection of the intelli-gible being who strives to know them. Leibniz gives symptomaticexpression to this relation in a short meditation on ‘Felicity’ (c. –).‘Virtue’, Leibniz asserts, ‘is the habit of acting according to wisdom. Itis necessary that practice accompany knowledge.’ Wisdom, for its part,‘is the science of felicity’ and felicity ‘a lasting state of pleasure’.Pleasure, though, ‘is a knowledge or feeling of perfection, not only inourselves, but also in others’; and this knowledge or feeling is itself trans-formative or perfecting of us, ‘for in this way some further perfection isaroused in us’. In other words, wisdom as the science of felicity is not justthe theoretical understanding of a concept. It is the awareness of the

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

divine perfections or essences that we achieve when we are ourselves per-fected through that awareness, and is thus the pleasure or feeling of per-fection. Leibniz goes on to formulate the transformative character ofmetaphysical knowledge of the perfections in this way:

Now it is necessary to explain the feeling or the knowledge of perfection. Theconfused perception of some perfection constitutes the pleasure of sense, butthis pleasure can be [productive] of greater imperfections which are born of it,as a fruit with a good taste and a good odour can conceal a poison. This is whyone must shun the pleasures of the sense, as one shuns a stranger, or, sooner, aflattering enemy.

Knowledge is of two kinds, that of facts and that of reasons. That of facts isperception, that of reasons is intelligence.

Knowledge of reasons perfects us because it teaches us universal and eternaltruths, which are manifested in the perfect Being. But knowledge of facts is likethat of the streets of a town, which serves us while we stay there, [but] after[leaving] which we don’t wish to burden our memory any longer. (PW, –;Gr, , –)

Here we can make out the lineaments of a particular self-transfor-mative contemplative practice. In the classic Platonic–rationalistmanner, Leibniz teaches that to be virtuous or act in accordance withwisdom one must attain the knowledge or feeling of perfection thatcomes with being perfected. One attains this knowledge or feelingthrough the pleasures of the mind or the knowledge of reasons, whichis in fact the knowledge of the perfections that perfect us. To obtain thispure knowledge and pleasure, though, is not just a theoretical matter. Infact it is to undergo a personal transformation. As in Albert’s metaphys-ics, this is figured in terms of shunning the pleasures of sense andapproaching the perfections or essences at their source, in their contin-uous emanation from divine intellection. For sensory perception is notjust the confused or ‘imperfect’ knowledge of an intellectual concept butis also the source of our metaphysical–moral impairment, as we remainlocked in our imperfect sensory condition through the contemplation ofempirical things and satisfactions. Factual or sense-based knowledge isthus not just intellectually inadequate but spiritually corrupting, as itthreatens to trap us in contemplation of imperfections. The world offacts should be like a town we pass through on our way to a permanentdwelling in the city of contemplation. For its part, rationally basedknowledge is not just theoretically true but is so because it is spirituallypurifying. It permits knowledge of intellectual perfections (reasons,essences, intelligibles) by purging the intellect of the sensory perceptions

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that cut us off from self-perfecting contemplation of the source of all per-fections – the ens perfectissimum.

We can propose therefore that Leibniz’s metaphysics – and, to theextent that he is its harbinger, enlightenment metaphysics more gener-ally – represents not the final recovery of man’s ‘rational being’, but away of cultivating the self in the image of this figure. This specific modeof ‘subjectifying’ individuals was adapted from the contemplative prac-tices of Schulmetaphysik, and was developed in opposition to the rival waysof grooming ‘truth-capable’ subjects contained in civil philosophy. Inclarifying this metaphysical cultivation of the self, the present sectionundertakes three tasks. First, we discuss Leibniz’s anthropology (and cos-mology) as giving shape to a particular way of relating to and shapingthe self. This in turn will require us to describe the principles of meta-physical abstraction as a particular spiritual exercise or practice of intel-lectual self-transformation. Finally, we will have to comprehend thefigure of formal or pure intellection as the comportment-ideal of a pre-stigious way of life, that of the secular sage. Once we have completedthese tasks we will be in a position to discuss Leibniz’s philosophicaltheology and natural law as disciplines whose truth is informed by themetaphysician’s prestigious moral–epistemological status – that is, hisqualification to speak authoritatively on religious and civil matters byvirtue of his participation in the quasi-divine intellection of pure con-cepts.

.. The anthropology of pure reason

The most compact formulation of Leibniz’s anthropology is given in hisMonadology (), which also contains a cosmology and theodicy. TheMonadology posits a universe teeming with monads or simple substances.The ‘atomic’ or non-complex character of the monads means that theymay never pass away, generation and death merely being cyclical com-positions and decompositions of the simple substances. Increate Godcreates the monads by intelligising them, thereby imbuing the createdintelligences with a ‘spark’ or ‘image’ of this same creative intellection,albeit limited by the receptivity or passivity characteristic of the crea-turely status: ‘So only God is the primary unity or the simple originalsubstance of which all the created or derivative monads are products,and from whom they are born, so to speak, by continual fulgurations ofthe divinity from moment to moment, but limited by the receptivity ofthe created being, for whom it is essential to have limits’ (Mo, § ).

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Through this continuous creative intellection of the monads or substan-tial forms, the divine mind imbues them with all of the accidents or pred-icates which will occur to them as events in time, and which they willexperience as ‘perceptions’. All monads, even the ‘naked’ monads thatmake up the world of things, are animate in the sense of harbouring asoul or entelechy, which is the substantial form intelligised by God andcontaining the predicates or perceptions that individuate things. Giventhat all monads reflect the divine mind, and given that the universe is aplenum, placing all monads in communication with each other, then:‘this mutual connection and accommodation of all created things toeach other and of each to all the rest causes each simple substance tohave relations which express all the others and consequently to be a per-petual living mirror of the universe’ (Mo, § ).

It is, however, in his treatment of the ‘rational’ or ‘thinking’ monads– man and the angels – that the ‘ascetic’ or self-formative role ofLeibniz’s anthropology comes to the fore. Like ordinary monads orsouls, rational monads or spirits are subject to the same passive percep-tions that arise from the unfolding of their forms in time. By virtue ofthe spiritual substance which they share with the divine mind, however,the rational monads are capable of becoming self-conscious of theseperceptions, which allows them to rise from passive to active intellection,in imitation of God:

Among other differences which exist between ordinary souls and spirits . . .there is still this: souls in general are living mirrors or images of the universe ofcreated beings, while spirits are also images of divinity itself or of the author ofnature, capable of knowing the system of the universe and of imitating it tosome extent by means of architectonic samples, each spirit being like a littledivinity within its own sphere. (Mo, § )

Due to its structuring by this onto-theological hierarchy, Leibniz’s dis-tinction between empirical–historical knowledge and knowledgederived from a priori reflection possesses a strongly moral–anthropolog-ical character, despite the fact that it is normally discussed in largely epis-temological or logical terms, as, for example, by Beck (Beck ,–). Leibniz thus treats empirical–historical knowledge as sympto-matic of the body-burdened passive perceptions of the lower creatures,while regarding a priori reflection or intellectual intuition as indicativeof man’s capacity for participating in God’s active timeless intelligisingof the forms of things (Mo, §§ –). The monadology therefore func-tions as a moral anthropology by tying the capacity for divine intellec-tion to an image of the being who is to be its bearer. This is what permits

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Leibniz to present theoretical speculation as a god-like deportment ofthe self, while stigmatising empirical knowledge as passive and beastly.

In this regard, despite its neo-Platonic formulation, Leibniz’s mona-dology plays a role strikingly similar to the one Thomassen ascribes toAlbertian metaphysics. The common feature is the role of the metaphys-ical anthropology – always focused in the image of man as a sensiblyembodied intellectual being – in inducing the desire for a particular kindof self-transformation. In both Leibnizian and scholastic metaphysicsthe desire for metaphysical knowledge of the perfections or forms arisesfrom the imaginal ‘ontological’ gap between divine and human intellec-tion. This gap is, in its turn, instituted in the paideia of metaphysics, inorder to induce the desire for metaphysical knowledge.

By configuring man as a spiritual being whose spontaneous intelligis-ing links him to divine intellection of the forms – but whose receptivesensing threatens to trap him in confused and self-interested empiricalperception – Leibniz, too, is engaged in programming a particular workof spiritual self-formation. This is one that requires individuals to focustheir desires (and fears) for moral regeneration in the way they knowabout things. Specifically, it impels them to relate to their own thoughtsas if these were a conduit to a higher mode of being, but one threatenedwith corruption by empirical perceptions that mire them in the sensory‘historical’ world. Rather than being a philosophical mistake that wouldbe corrected by Kant’s separation of sensibility and understanding, thecontinuum that the monadology establishes between a degraded sensoryperception and a purified rational intellection may thus be regarded asinstituting a particular way of relating to the self. This is a relationthrough which certain individuals learn to regard their true selves as afugitive pure intellect, emanating from the divine mind yet darkened byman’s sensible being, hence in need of restorative purification for com-pletion.

Two features of the intellectual deportment arising from this use ofthe monadology are of particular importance for our present concerns.In the first place, as Patrick Riley has pointed out, by establishing a con-tinuum between human and divine intellection, the monadology allowsLeibniz to represent man as a citizen in the divine republic or Civitas Dei,rather than as a mere passive thing in a mechanically ordered universe(Riley , ):

It is this [their image-relation to divine intellection] which renders spiritscapable of entering into a kind of society with God and makes his relation to

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them not merely that of an inventor to his machine (as God is related to othercreatures) but also that of a prince to his subjects and even a father to hischildren.

It is easy to conclude from this that the assemblage of all spirits must makeup the city of God, that is to say, the most perfect state which is possible underthe most perfect of monarchs. (Mo, §§ –)

More importantly, however, Leibniz’s monadology is designed to have atransformative effect on the philosopher himself. If the monadology iscentral to the continuum Leibniz establishes between God’s moralgovernance of the universe and the prince’s political governance of thestate, then the key to this continuum lies in the exercise in spiritual self-transformation programmed by this speculative anthropology. For it isthrough the exercise in ascent to the a priori intellection of the forms ofthings that the individual establishes the unity of his own persona, asmetaphysician, modelling this on the transcendent unity of God’s time-less intellection of substances prior to their scattering across time andspace. From this perspective, there can be no fundamental distinctionbetween God’s rational natural law and the civil laws of the secularprince, or between man’s religious and civil duties. For the latter repre-sent only the devolution of the former into the world of time and utility,which it is the task of the metaphysician to transcend. This speculativedeportment, as we shall see in the following chapter, is precisely what isexcluded by Pufendorf ’s anthropology.

.. The exercise of abstraction

In redescribing Leibnizian metaphysical abstraction as a spiritual exer-cise, we can begin by returning to our observation that the role of themetaphysical anthropology is to programme a certain kind of ‘work onthe self ’. In treating empirical objects as confused perceptions of quasi-divine clear and distinct ideas, Leibniz’s monadology is designed toeffect a turn from the outer to the inner world. In fact, it is an exercisein unifying the person around a single ‘I’ or self – a metaphysical moralpersonality – whose God-likeness consists in apprehending the appar-ently autonomous and differentiated historical world from a single pointof a priori intellection:

It is also by the knowledge of necessary truths and by their abstraction that werise to reflective acts, which enable us to think of what is called I and to con-sider this or that to be in us; it is thus, as we think of ourselves, that we think of

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being, of substance, of the simple and the compound, of the immaterial, andof God himself, conceiving of that which is limited in us as being without limitsin him. These reflective acts provide us with the principal objects of our reason-ings. (Mo, § )

According to Leibniz our reasonings are ‘based upon two great prin-ciples’. The first of these is ‘the principle of contradiction, by virtue of whichwe judge that false which involves a contradiction, and that true which isopposed or contradictory to the false’ (Mo, § ). The second is ‘the prin-ciple of sufficient reason, by virtue of which we observe that there can befound no fact that is true or existent, or any true proposition, withoutthere being a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise,although we cannot know these reasons in most cases’ (Mo, § ). Theprinciple of sufficient reason provides Leibniz with his key method ofabstraction and, indeed, of acceding to truth. It is the means by whichindividuals, ‘shunning’ the pleasures of sense, ascend from empiricalfacts and the confused murmur of sensory perception, via a ladder ofprogressively simpler definitions – which are also causes of the facts theydetermine – arriving finally at a priori axioms, laws, and primitivedefinitions. The latter terminate the analytic regress in that they definethemselves simply on being contemplated (DM, §§ –; Mo, §§ –). Inthis way one passes from ‘truths of fact’ to ‘truths of reason’. Conversely,the principle of contradiction is the means by which one passes from apriori intuition of concepts – known to be true (possible) by virtue oftheir component intelligibilia containing no contradictions – to the syn-thetic demonstration of empirical truths independently of experience.Leibniz recommends the a posteriori analytic path to truth, regardingthe a priori synthetic path as too difficult for unregenerate intellects,although not for all: ‘Yet superior geniuses should enter upon this [apriori] way, even without hope of arriving at particulars by means of it,in order that we may have true concepts of the universe, the greatnessof God, and the nature of the soul, through which the mind can be mostperfected, for this is the most important end of contemplation. Yet webelieve that the absolute use of this method is conserved for a better life’(Lm, ).

Leibniz’s twin principles of reason are of course normally understoodin terms of epistemology and its (post-Kantian) history. Here, these prin-ciples have come to stand for Leibniz’s flawed attempt to formulate thetrue relation between reason and experience that would eventually becaptured in Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories. For, sothe standard argument goes, Kant shows that the mind accedes only to

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the transcendental forms of empirical experience – the categories ofcognition and the forms of sensory intuition – rather than to thetranscendent forms of ‘things in themselves’, or Leibnizian noumenalessences (Beck , –; Kahl-Furthmann ; Wundt , –,–, –). On this telling of the history, Leibniz’s principles of contra-diction and sufficient reason are incapable of the correct formulationdue to their blurring of causes and reasons, sensibility and understand-ing. This is unavoidable given the programme of ascending from theempirical experience or ‘confused ideas’ of the perfections to their ‘clearand distinct’ intuition. Leibniz of course sees the principle of sufficientreason as representing the fundamental operation of the soul or minditself – the operation through which it perfects itself by following thepath that leads from its corporeal sensations to the pure intelligising itshares with God.

If, however, we consider its dependency on the metaphysical anthro-pology – that is, on the philosopher’s image of himself as an intelligiblebeing mired in the imperfections of empirical experience – then theprinciple of sufficient reason acquires a strikingly different significance.Rather than being a false theory of the conditions of experience, or atrue path to the intelligibles of pure reason, it appears instead as a spec-ulative practice performed by the philosopher on himself, in pursuit ofthe perfection required to know the perfections. In short, it appears asone of Hadot’s exercises in ‘mental concentration and renunciation ofthe sensible world’ (P. Hadot , ). Programmed by the principlesof contradiction and sufficient reason, Leibnizian abstraction takesplace as a fundamental reshaping of the individual’s relation to himselfand his world. Leibniz thus understands abstraction as the moment inwhich individuals ‘recollect’ that perceptions of (apparently) externalobjects in fact come from their own subconscious thinking: ‘we rise toreflective acts, which enable us to think of what is called I and to considerthis or that to be in us’ (Mo, § ). This in turn is to be regarded as animitation of or participation in God’s ‘continuous fulguration’ of theintelligibles.

We can propose then that Leibniz’s principles of reason are not theo-retical mistakes that left him with an insufficient regard for the indepen-dence of empirical experience. Rather, the abstractive ascent todetermining Gründe – through the shunning of the pleasures of sense andthe contemplation of reasons that are also causes of phenomena – is aspiritual exercise individuals perform to ensure that they will not regardempirical experience as independent of pure intelligising. In other

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words, Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason is not a mistaken theorythrough which a universal subject misrepresents its true relation to adomain of independent empirical experience. Rather it is a real practicethrough which certain individuals cultivate a specific way of relating toempirical experience: as the passive sensing of ideas originating in the(presently quasi-conscious) active intellection of the universe. The prin-ciple of sufficient reason is the means by which individuals can groom asubjectivity in which all sensory phenomena appear as husks of the‘hidden perfections’ that God’s intelligising maintains within them: ‘Thedivine perfections are concealed in all things’, we recall Leibniz intimat-ing, ‘but very few know how to discover them there’ (Lm, ).

Seen in this light, Leibniz’s principles of reason appear less as earlyforms of Kantian epistemology and more as late versions of scholasticmetaphysical exercises (Honnefelder , –). Like these exercises,Leibniz’s practice of abstraction requires a prior ‘existential’ acceptanceby the philosopher that empirical experience is both intellectually andmorally imperfect. This, we recall, is the burden of Leibniz’s commentthat: ‘The confused perception of some perfection constitutes the pleas-ure of sense, but this pleasure can be [productive] of greater imperfec-tions which are born of it [which is why] one must shun the pleasures ofthe sense, as one shuns a stranger, or, sooner, a flattering enemy’ (PW,; Gr, , ). Without this ‘personal’ acceptance of the spiritualdeficiency of finite empirical experience – that is, in the face of unmovedacceptance of the ‘brute’ adequacy of such experience – the demonstra-tion of the world’s metaphysical intelligibility lacks pedagogical grip onthe person who is to undergo enlightenment. This helps to explainLeibniz’s stigmatisation of those who deny the defective nature ofempirical knowledge as ‘coarse’ empiricists and ‘irreligious’ mechanists.

In any case, in requiring personal acceptance of the spiritualinsufficiency of empirical experience, the proof of a priori intellectionis not just a chain of ideas leading to a propositional conclusion. As themeans of inducing this acceptance, the principles of non-contradictionand sufficient reason form part of a specific intellectual paideia or forma-tive regimen. This paideia is one that initiates neophytes into the disci-pline of metaphysics by inducing in them the experience of empiricalreality’s spiritual insufficiency. It thereby binds them to the exercise inmetaphysical abstraction as the only means of recovering the pure ideasof their higher being: ‘One need not shun at all pleasures which are bornof the intelligence or of reasons, as one penetrates the reason of thereason of perfections, that is to say as one sees them flow from theirsource, which is the absolutely perfect being’ (PW, ; Gr, , ).

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The method of abstraction is thus not a means of recovering conceptswhose thinking in fact makes the experience and reality of things pos-sible. It is rather a spiritual exercise – a ‘work of the self on the self ’ –aimed at forming a person who will relate to their concepts and them-selves in this way. This exercise operates by inducing a (milieu-specific)state of metaphysical anxiety or longing for pure vision of the intelli-gibles, thence to resolve it through assiduous winnowing of the husks ofempirical perception, leading finally to the contemplation of pure ideasas if they were the source of empirical experience. This is the ascesislying behind Leibniz’s claim that in order to know the pure ideas or‘hidden perfections’ individuals must perfect themselves, as humanunderstanding has to approach the same intensity or perfection of beingas its spiritual object. But this ascesis is simultaneously the means bywhich the threatening autonomy of civil authority and its sciences couldbe held in check. For abstractive intellection leads not only to God butto the intelligibles that are responsible for the knowability of being assuch, and are hence presupposed by all the particular sciences, includ-ing the civil ones.

Seen in this light, Leibniz’s Platonic conceptualisation of justice is notinherently superior to the nominalist–empiricist conceptualisations ofPufendorf and Thomasius. Rather, it is just historically different totheirs, but in a highly significant way. In claiming insight into the divineidea of justice – and in stigmatising the empirical conceptions of the civilphilosophers as imperfect and utilitarian – Leibniz was in fact usingmetaphysical abstraction as a weapon for combating the secularisationof civil governance inherent in their objectification and instrumentalisa-tion of political–juridical rule. We will return to this issue below. For themoment, let us say that, far from representing the true path from empir-ical to ‘theoretical’ concepts of justice, Leibniz’s method of metaphysi-cal abstraction is the ascetic discipline for a highly specific ‘theo-rational’mode of acceding to truth. As such, it is not inherently superior to othermethodological disciplines – such as Arnisaeus’ empirical–technicalconceptualisation of political order, or Pufendorf ’s empirical–historicalconstruction of natural law – which resulted in ‘therapeutic’ or instru-mentalist modes of acceding to the truths of law and politics.

.. The philosopher’s deportment

This is the appropriate angle from which to approach our third and finaltask in this section: understanding the pursuit of formal or pure intellec-tion as the comportment-ideal of a prestigious way of life. If Leibniz’s

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anthropology and cosmology represent the configuration of a subjectcapable of acceding to divine or rational truth – and if his method ofabstraction is a spiritual exercise that individuals carry out on themselvesin order to shape the being capable of this accession – then it seems thatknowledge of theo-rational truth is inseparable from attaining a partic-ular kind of personhood, that of the self-purifying metaphysical sage.This inner relation between rational knowledge and personal deport-ment is given symptomatic expression in Leibniz’s own discourse. Afterall, Leibniz posits just such a relation in his cardinal doctrine that knowl-edge of the pure concepts or ‘hidden perfections’ is dependent on thespiritual perfection of the being who is to know them. In fact this linkagebetween reason and spiritual perfection was both instrument andoutcome of the process through which Leibniz was able to tap into thecultural authority that Schulmetaphysik had acquired through its confes-sional proximity to theology, channelling this into a new conception ofphilosophy and the philosopher.

We are fortunate in having several helpful commentaries on theappearance of this new and exalted conception of secular philosophy thataccompanied ‘modern’ rationalist metaphysics (Schmidt-Biggemanna, –; Schneiders b, –). What these accounts haveperhaps not made sufficiently clear, however, is the degree to whichLeibniz’s fashioning of a new and culturally authoritative persona for thephilosopher – that intellectual being who uncovers the forms of intelli-gibility common to all the sciences through an act of abstractive self-purification – was dependent on a complex process of culturaltransmission and adaptation. This is the process that saw the exercisesused in the self-perfecting contemplation of the divine perfectionsadapted to the practice of philosophical reflection on the pure concepts.These are the concepts intended to anchor the centrifugal civil sciencesin transcendental reflection on the pure forms of experience, therebyallowing philosophia Christiana to make the transition to its modern form –rationalist metaphysics.

So culturally ambitious was this metaphysical philosophy that itsought to expel rival civil modes – neo-Stoic, neo-Epicurean, empiricist– from the domain of philosophy altogether, appropriating the term‘philosophy’ for metaphysical philosophy alone. The effects of this cul-tural arrogation can still be felt today, in those histories of early modernGerman philosophy that chart a course from Leibniz to Kant via Wolff,consigning the civil philosophers to a minor, barely philosophical role.Leibniz thus initiated a distinction between ‘philosophy’ and ‘history’

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that would indeed pass via Wolff to Kant. He did so by identifying phi-losophy with pure insight into the a priori possibilities (possibilia) of thingsprior to their occurrence in time, and history with the merely empiricalknowledge of things as they are given to the senses post facto (Schneidersb). This hierarchical distinction between philosophy and historybecame metonymic for a whole series of distinctions between the ratio-nal and empirical disciplines, the pure and applied sciences. It also har-bours an image of the philosopher as a type of secular prophet who,through his pure apprehension of the a priori concepts, possesses privi-leged insight into the future course of history, as the eschatologicalunfolding of these concepts in time.

The relation between the truth of metaphysical philosophy and theenlightened or exalted condition of the philosophical personage is clearenough in Leibniz’s meditation ‘On Wisdom’, probably written in thelast decade of the seventeenth century. Commenting that ‘persons ofrank’ too often squander their power to do good through succumbing tothe pleasures of ‘sensual indulgence’ – only to reap the punishments ofill-health and ill-repute – Leibniz prescribes a course of philosophicalmeditation. Only this can bring the true regenerative pleasure thatcomes with the perfecting of our intellects in the intellection of perfec-tion:

Such joy, which a person can always create for himself when his mind [Gemüth]is well ordered, consists in the perception of pleasure in himself and in thepowers of his mind, when a man feels within himself a strong inclination andreadiness for the good and the true, and particularly through the profoundknowledge which an enlightened understanding provides for us, namely, that weexperience the chief source, the course, and the purpose of everything, and theincomprehensible excellence of that Supreme Nature which comprises allthings within it. Thus we are lifted above the unknowing, just as if we werelooking down from the stars and could see all earthly things under our feet. (Lm,; Ge, , )

From this panoptic vantage-point, to which he accedes through thepurification of his intellectual being, the metaphysical philosopher canview the objects of all the sciences via the light of reason ‘which is bornwith us’; for these objects are themselves only empirical manifestationsof the pure ideas revealed in this light. Through this linkage of pureknowledge to the exalted purity of the philosopher’s persona, Leibnizcarries forward the conception of metaphysics as the transcendentalscience of ‘being as being’ and as the ‘science of the sciences’.

For Leibniz, all men are in principle capable of attaining this level of

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intellectual perfection, although in fact few actually do so, due to the pre-ponderance of the sensory perceptions and passions in the majority. Wehave already argued, however, that Leibniz’s subject of reason is noteven in principle universal. By virtue of its dependency on an institutedspiritual anthropology and an administered exercise in abstraction, theintuition of pure ideas takes place as the goal of a specialised spiritualgrooming. Similar anthropologies and spiritual exercises were respon-sible for tying knowledge to personal ‘holiness’ – that is, to the culturallyauthoritative comportment of the sage or the holy man – in antiquity(Brown ; Brown a; I. Hadot ; P. Hadot ). They can alsobe found in the early modern Schulmetaphysik that Leibniz was adapting(Sparn , –; Sparn ). Lutheran natural jurists such asSamuel Rachel, for example, tie knowledge of natural law to the goodman’s ‘nobility of character’ in a manner that is typical of Protestantneoscholasticism:

In the same way, although Natural Laws are in themselves certain, yet relativelyto men and human knowledge they may be either obscure or uncertain or clear;so that, just as jurists employ as a kind of standard of human conduct the dili-gence of the good man [arbitrium boni viri], so, and rightly, philosophers refer tothe judgment of a good man, whose nobility of character, kalokagaqia, isknown to be conjoined with Wisdom in an indissoluble connection, and whotherefore knows better than anyone else whether a given action is or is not con-formable to the Natural Laws which Prudence has promulgated. (Rachel ,)

It is reasonable to propose, therefore, that in tethering rational knowledgeto spiritual perfection – and thereby attaching the civil sciences to the hubof Christian philosophy – Leibniz was placing the ancient culturalauthority of the sage at the disposal of the metaphysical enlightenment.

It should now be clear that in deriving theo-rational concepts of law,politics, and religion through abstractive ascent to the intelligibles,Leibnizian metaphysics is not the elaboration of a confirmable theory.Rather, it constitutes a spiritual discipline aimed at forming a particularkind of intellectual deportment which, in fact, is the deportment of aparticular kind of intellectual. This is an intellectual who will treat theexistence of empirical–historical forms of law, politics, and religion asimperfect and corrupting. This transforms actually existing legal, politi-cal, and religious arrangements into the starting point for the exercise inspiritual ascent that will qualify the metaphysician to reshape them inaccordance with metaphysical conceptions of justice and salvation. In

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short, if Leibnizian rationalism does not constitute a confirmable philo-sophical theory, that is because it embodies the spiritual groomingresponsible for the authoritative spiritual deportment of the metaphysi-cal sage. It is in this light that we now turn to Leibniz’s philosophicaltheology and then his natural law.

.

Leibniz’s philosophical theology can only be understood against thebackdrop of the civil philosophers’ attempt to extirpate the whole genreof ‘natural theology’. Here, we can recall Thomasius’ attack on the fourbooks of Lombard’s Sentences, for their philosophical explication of theChristian mysteries: ‘It is likely that in these four books Lombard hadattempted to unite the doctrines of Augustine and Aristotle; [for] thewhole work contains a mish-mash of theology and philosophy. The HolyScriptures are explained in accordance with the principles of pagan phi-losophy. In ethics and natural law the old stupidities are advanced’ (VG,). For a long time, historians have seen the civil philosophers’ refusalto integrate theology and philosophy as symptomatic of their failure todevelop a reconciliatory philosophical theology. Now, however, we cansee this refusal as indicative of a profound historical analysis of the cul-tural and political functions of university metaphysics and natural theol-ogy. In rejecting all forms of natural theology – in programmaticallyexcluding all philosophical explications of the mysteries of sin, damna-tion, justification, and salvation from the sphere of civil knowledge –Thomasius was executing the dual strategy that lies at the heart of civilphilosophy: the desacralising of the civil and the ‘privatising’ of thesacral.

Concomitantly, in those works which he dedicated to the metaphysi-cal explication of Christian doctrine – the ‘Catholic Demonstrations’(–), the Confessio Philosophi (), the Systema Theologicum () andthe Theodicy () – Leibniz was engaged in a process both more con-tentious and less benign than that of making religion safe for reason, orvice versa. In fact he was attempting to transfer the philosophical medi-ation of the Christian faith – together with all of the power and prestigeattaching to it – from the custodianship of confessional theologians tothat of rationalist metaphysicians. In ignoring the civil philosophers’embargo on natural theology, Leibniz was thus engaged in an uncom-promising defence of the metaphysician’s access to the divine and,

Philosophical theology

through this, of this personage’s claim to mediate Christian doctrine andauthority in the civil domain. Leibniz’s grandest version of this claim liesin his programme for reunifying the faith around a metaphysical expli-cation of Christian truths agreeable to all three confessions ( Jordan; Wiedeburg ). These at least are the propositions to be exploredin our discussion of Leibniz’s Confessio Philosophi.

.. Theological philosophy

Leibniz’s Confessio Philosophi or Philosopher’s Confession of Faith was writtenin but remained unpublished during his lifetime. Manuscripts were,however, circulated to influential philosophers and theologians, includ-ing Antoine Arnauld and the Catholic vicar to the Hanoverian court,bishop Nicolaus Steno, who is the probable source of an important setof marginal annotations. Taking the form of a philosophical dialogue,the Confessio deals with the origin of sin and the defence of God’s just-ness in the face of the suffering and damnation. It thus explores thecentral questions of the Theodicy, but in a more compact and lucidmanner. In contrast with the civil-philosophical strategy of treating con-tentious doctrines as adiaphora, while simultaneously establishing theo-logically indifferent forms of civil authority, Leibniz’s objective in theConfessio is to construct a metaphysical surrogate for theological truth,making the latter available as a moral foundation for civil society.

In the Confessio Leibniz concentrates on providing metaphysical expli-cations for the biblical doctrines of sin, damnation, and election. Theseexplications are grounded in the metaphysical anthropology and cos-mology later elaborated in the Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology.In keeping with this Christian–Platonic anthropology and cosmology,God is conceived as related to the world through an optimally harmoni-ous ordering of the ‘series of things’. This onto-theological order isgrounded in God’s non-contradictory intellection of the essences and hischoice of the best possible world. Among the infinite other worlds thatGod might have actualised from his intelligising of non-contradictoryand ‘compossible’ (logically possible and actually compatible) sub-stances, the best possible world is the one that permits the maximumharmonisation of potentially conflicting elements (DM, §§ –).

The ethical or moral–theological dimension of this metaphysical cos-mology is encapsulated in the Confessio’s concept of happiness, whoseroots lie not in the notion of social security that Leibniz’s civil rivals wereelaborating, but in the notion of spiritual felicity or beatitude. For

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

Leibniz, as we have already seen, happiness is a spiritual conditionarising from the soul’s intellectual contemplation of the divine harmony,representing in fact a ‘taking on’ or participation in this harmony:

[ilosopher]. I will take it from your answer that you and I accept [that ifGod is just he loves everyone]. Is there not general agreement that Godis all-knowing?

[eologian]. Yes, so?. Therefore no thinkable thing possesses harmony unless God perpetually

knows it.. Agreed.. So, each happiness is harmonious or beautiful.. Granted.. Now, I will prove it so that others won’t deny it. There is happiness only in

the intellect.. Correct, because no-one is happy if he doesn’t know that . . . Whoever is

conscious of his condition is an intellectual being [mens, geistiges Wesen].Therefore no-one is happy who is not an intellectual being.

. That follows. In any case, happiness is the condition of the intellect that ismost agreeable to the intellect itself; nothing is agreeable to the intellect,though, except harmony.

. Yes, of course, because we have just agreed that ‘to take pleasure’[delectari] means nothing other than to experience harmony.

. Happiness is based therefore in a spiritual condition of highest possibleharmony. The nature of the intellect is thought; the harmony of theintellect is based therefore in the thought of harmony; [and] the highestharmony of the intellect or felicity [is based] finally in the contemplationof universal harmony – that is, God’s – in the intellect.

. Excellent: because at the same time this shows that the happiness of theintellect and the contemplation of God are one. (CP, –)

Harmony, as a mode of perfection, holds together the cosmological andmoral–anthropological sides of Leibniz’s theology. On the one hand,harmony refers to the perfect condition of the cosmic order or ‘totalseries of things’ arising from ‘God’s nature or, equivalently, the ideas ofthings’. On the other hand, it refers to the enlightened condition of theintellect that, in contemplating this order, establishes harmony withinitself and with the divine order of things, which is the source of its felic-ity or perfection. As the most perfect being, God finds happiness or lovein the felicity of all beings, this in turn making him most love-worthy;and, as justice consists in the love of all, God is most just.

With this framework in place, Leibniz is ready to begin his metaphys-ical explication of the problems of evil and providence. It is theTheologian who plays devil’s advocate, drawing out what he takes to be

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the heterodox fatalistic consequences of the Philosopher’s doctrine, anddoing so in a manner that threatens to make it stand proxy for theCalvinist doctrine of predestination. If, argues the Theologian, God isthe cause of the whole series of things, and if this series contains sin andevil, then God himself must be the author of evil – unless, of course,there is a second wicked God, which is impossible. Moreover, if theevents of the series flow of necessity from God’s intelligising of their apriori possibility – if, as Leibniz would later argue, all the events that amonad may undergo are already contained in God’s intelligising it –then it is necessary that some individuals, such as Pilate and Judas,should sin and be damned for eternity. Hence, if all-knowing God thusnecessitates the whole cosmic series, he must will the damnation of someand the election of others, as the Calvinists teach, which is incompatiblewith his justice or universal love (CP, , ).

The Philosopher employs two kinds of argument to avert this chainof consequences, the first one being an ethico-cosmological argument.As nothing exists without a ‘sufficient reason’, and as the chain ofsufficient reasons leads ultimately to God – as the ungrounded cause ofthe whole series – one cannot wish to alter or suspend the chain of con-ditions without wishing God’s non-existence (CP, , –). At the sametime, however, we know with certainty that this world is the best possible– that is, the one permitting the optimal harmonisation of dissonant ele-ments. This means that sin and evil are to be regarded as contributingto the overall harmony or perfection of the series; just as, in the wordsof the Philosopher, the painter uses shadow to enhance brightness andthe doctor uses poison to cure illness. If, therefore, we wish to maintainthe harmony and tranquillity of our own intellect, we must regard sinand evil as reconciled within the greater harmony of the divine order,somewhat in the manner of Stoic and Epicurean ethical cosmologies.

Interwoven with this is a second, more strictly Christian–metaphysi-cal, argument. Just as Scheibler had done sixty years earlier, Leibnizargues that if we wish to understand how evil can be inevitable withoutbeing metaphysically necessary – which would make God into its author– we must refine our usual understanding of such concepts as necessity,possibility, and actuality. The key to this clarification lies in the meta-physical distinction between God’s existence – that is, his understandingor intellection of things – and his will. Like everything else, argues thePhilosopher, evil exists in God’s understanding as a ‘necessary possibil-ity’, or as something whose thinking entails no contradiction. This con-cerns only the idea or essence of evil though, not its ‘accidental’ or

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

existential inevitability in the ‘series of things’ that comprises this world(CP, –). The existence of evil in the world – which is indeed inevi-table and foreseen by God – thus represents only an existential necessity,not an absolute one; something that God tolerates as part of the wholeseries of things (CP, –, –). Hence God neither wills nor finds pleas-ure in sin and damnation, because he takes pleasure only in the integra-tion of evil in the larger perfection of the whole. Sin or evil thus arisesfrom the contingency of the actual totality of things – in fact from theimperfect actualisation of the intelligised perfections – and is reconciledin God’s ‘best possible’ harmonisation of this dissonant totality (CP,–).

These two modes of argument are jointly responsible for Leibniz’snovel metaphysical account of damnation and election. According toLeibniz the damned are those who die hating God. For, cut off from newimpressions by separation from their bodies, these souls must remainimprisoned in their dying hateful thoughts for eternity, so that: ‘Whohates God at their death therefore damns themselves’ (CP, ). On theone hand the figure of self-damnation is explicated via the ethico-cos-mological argument. The damned are those who die in a sinful or ‘dis-sonant’ moral condition, hating God for the presence of evil in the worldrather than achieving the self-harmonising love that comes with contem-plative acceptance of God’s reconciliation of evil in the greater cosmicgood. On the other hand, Leibniz explains damnation via his distinctionbetween metaphysical necessity and existential inevitability. Here, in thesubtle fissure between the metaphysical necessity of the relationsbetween divinely intelligised substances and the contingent necessity oftheir actualised forms, the damned souls are free to hate rather than tolove God, which is a symptom of their imperfect actualisation. But theydo so apparently only because of their erroneous knowledge of theirplace in this harmonised best of all orders.

It thus appears that the correct metaphysical theory of the harmonicorder is also the salvific means by which the elect bring themselves intoharmony with this order: ‘the harmony of the intellect is based thereforein the thought of harmony’. If so, then rather than being a rational expli-cation of Christian doctrine, Leibniz’s philosophical theology is layingclaim to the power to save. We must therefore depart from Walter Sparn’sinterpretation of the Confessio, in which he credits it with striking a‘dialectical’ balance between the ‘theosophical’ translation of Christiandoctrine into idealist philosophy, and the anti-metaphysical ‘two-truths’doctrine, which consigns theology and philosophy to discrete (revealed

Philosophical theology

and natural) spheres (Sparn , –). The synchronisation of thiswork’s philosophical and soteriological functions – its ascription ofsalvific power to metaphysics itself – suggests, however, that Leibniz wasindeed attempting to fashion a philosophical substitute for religion.Moreover, by making moral redemption contingent on acceptance of the‘true philosophy’, this cultural translation betrays the persistence of acertain kind of confessionalism.

.. Rationalism as religion

We derive some evidence for the quasi-confessional character ofLeibniz’s philosophical theology from the contemporary reactions of anavowedly confessional theologian, Nicolaus Steno, the Hanoveriancourt’s Catholic vicar. In the margin of his copy of the Confessio, adja-cent to Leibniz’s account of the soul eternally imprisoned in its dyingthoughts, Steno writes: ‘This is a mere assertion. Why shouldn’t the soulbe able to perceive the conditions of the place in which it finds itself ?’To which Leibniz counter-annotates: ‘How else than through the corpo-real senses?’ (CP, –, fn. ). Here Leibniz’s metaphysical account ofdamnation – with the soul eternally imprisoned in its self-damning lastthoughts through loss of new sensory inputs – is seen by Steno as a non-authoritative rival confessional doctrine. In fact Leibniz’s metaphysics ofdamnation conflicts directly with Catholic teaching on the possibility ofpost-mortem redemption arising from the soul’s experiences in purgatory.

Similarly, adjacent to Leibniz’s claim that: ‘God harms those whoslavishly fear him or who wrongly assume that he will harm them, justas, conversely, he who firmly believes himself chosen or loved by God,brings it about that he (whom God loves constantly) will be elect’ (CP,), Steno makes the following annotation: ‘This too is a mere assertionbecause, on the contrary, everyone fears God at the beginning of theirconversion, and assumes that he might at least occasionally harm them;but nonetheless in this way they are led to the complete trust of love.’This provokes Leibniz’s counter-claim: ‘Those who slavishly fear Goddo not love him and are therefore not yet in the condition of grace.Therefore they will not be led to holiness in this way’ (CP, , fn. ).Recalling that Leibniz sees fear as arising from erroneous knowledge ofthe metaphysical order, this statement again suggests that he regards thetruth of his metaphysics as possessing salvific power – that is, as a rivalconfessional doctrine. It appears that only those who possess true meta-physical knowledge of the harmonisation of evil within the cosmic order

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

can be saved. For only thus is it possible to avoid the fear and hatred ofGod arising from the erroneous perception of unreconciled evil, and thedamnation to which this leads.

In fact the quasi-confessional character of Leibniz’s enterprise is man-ifest at the very heart of his philosopher’s theology, at the point wherehis cosmology and anthropology intersect: namely, in the rationalist doc-trine that the moral condition of the will is a function of the rational con-formation of the intellect to divine ideas. Here, in the field marked outby the long struggle between rationalism and voluntarism, Leibnizrehearses a problem which, we recall (see section .), was central toProtestant Schulmetaphysik. This is the problem of reconciling the meta-physical conception of evil as the imperfect realisation of an essence orentelechy, with the biblical conception of sin as a culpable free choice. Infact, just like his Lutheran and Calvinist predecessors, Leibniz is forcedto confront the problem that metaphysical rationalism appears to allowlittle scope for the freedom of the will necessary to make the damnedresponsible for their own punishment. Without such responsibilityhowever God’s providence appears incapable of reconciliation withhuman notions of justice.

Once again, Leibniz puts this critique of the metaphysical conceptionof evil into the mouth of the Theologian (CP, –). The damned arethose who will not to love God but to fear and hate him, thereby becom-ing responsible for their own damnation when they are trapped in theirdying thoughts. Given, though, that the Philosopher sees this conditionof the will as arising from knowledge, knowledge from perception, andperception in turn from the soul’s location in the total series of things,then the sinful condition of the will is determined by the sinner’s placein the cosmic order. The damned would thus appear to be souls havingthe misfortune to occupy an imperfect or ‘dissonant’ place in the cosmicorder – to be incapable of willing otherwise than the imperfect confor-mation of their intellects in this place permits – hence to lack thefreedom of will required to make them morally responsible for theirdamnation.

The Philosopher begins his answer to this problem by arguing that aharmonious or good will is available to everyone, by virtue of the factthat it arises from rational contemplation of the order of things or theideas in God’s mind (CP, –). This way of framing the issues, though,does not address the Theologian’s questions regarding free will andresponsibility. Leibniz understands freedom of the will in a special meta-physical sense: not as the capacity to choose between alternative paths

Philosophical theology

in an undetermined manner, but as the capacity spontaneously to actu-alise one’s (intellectual) nature on the basis of true insight. In fact thePhilosopher distinguishes between spontaneity – the agent’s capacity toact in accordance with his nature – and freedom, which is the dispas-sionate condition of the will arising from a pure and tranquil intellectualinsight: ‘Spontaneity comes from potency, freedom from knowledge’(CP, ). This means, however, that souls can only freely will the good,never evil; for the freedom of the will that comes with tranquil knowl-edge of the order of things allows only for the spontaneous actualisationof the soul’s (good) intellectual nature (CP, ). As a result, Leibnizadvances the definitive doctrine of rationalist theology, that ‘every sinarises from error’ (CP, ). Sin is thus a purely ‘privative’ or negative phe-nomenon, arising from the mind’s failure to conform itself to the theo-rational metaphysical order, which leads to the will’s incapacity for loveand justice.

This doctrine does not, however, immediately solve the problem offreedom and moral responsibility for, as the Theologian concludes, if sinis actually based in error then: ‘As a result, every sin is to be excused.’The Philosopher’s response is worth quoting:

. Not in the least; because just as light falls through a crack into thedarkness [so] a means of escape stands within our power, assuming thatwe want to use it.

. But why do some will to use it [the light of divine knowledge] and othersnot?

. Because those who do not want to, do not understand that it can be usedwith profit; or, more specifically, because their souls [anima, Geist] aresuch that it is as if it [the light] were completely absent; that is, [they are]without reflection or attention, so that they look without seeing, listenwithout hearing. Here lies the beginning of the refusal of grace or, as it iscalled in the Holy Scripture, obstinacy. (CP, )

The problem with this solution, when seen from the viewpoint ofmodern academic philosophy, is clear enough. Leibniz – havingexplained the condition of the will in terms of knowledge of the divineorder – when asked why only some make use of this knowledge, answersin terms of the condition of their will: everyone has access to the lightof knowledge ‘assuming that they want to use it’. This impending circu-larity in the relation between the condition of the will and knowledge ofthe metaphysical order is only postponed by reference to the intellectualdarkness of the damned souls, whose imbecility makes them obstinateand whose obstinacy makes them imbecile. In either case Leibniz’s

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

explication does not leave the circle in which the sinful will is explainedin terms of lack of understanding and lack of understanding in termsof the sinful will.

.. The philosopher’s sin

We are not however interested in viewing Leibniz’s metaphysics of evilfrom the standpoint of modern academic philosophy, as if a better non-circular solution to this problem was waiting in the Kantian wings (Riley, –). Rather, we are interested in it as a particular way in whicha secular philosopher could lay claim to the authority flowing from alongstanding and prestigious metaphysical explication of Christian sin.

Once again bishop Steno offers us a way into the contemporary relig-ious significance of Leibniz’s philosophical theology. In one of hisseveral attempts to clarify the free will’s dependency on rational knowl-edge, Leibniz’s Philosopher comments that: ‘In order to maintain theprivilege of a free will, it is enough that we position ourselves at the cross-roads of life in such a way that we can only do that which we will, andthat we can only will that which we take to be good; but that we can onlyinvestigate that which is to be taken as good through the most completeuse of our reason’ (CP, ). Steno’s response is brief and to the point:‘But [can this be so] when free will is necessary for the investigation?’ ThatSteno is alert to the aporia lying at the heart Leibniz’s articulation of freewill to rational knowledge is clear in the mini-dilemma that he sketchesfor it: ‘Therefore [i.e., given the necessity of free will for the use ofreason], either one praises the highest gift of reason in vain [becausewithout free will it will not be used to know the good] or one must admitthe freedom of its use.’ Leibniz’s exasperated counter-annotation – ‘Asif anyone seriously denied this freedom of its use! I don’t understand theideas that the critic formed as he read this’ – is a more-than-rhetoricalexpression of the fact that he has not understood the force of Steno’scriticism (CP, , fn. ; my italics and square brackets). For Steno isobjecting to the fact that one cannot purport to derive freedom of thewill from the use of reason (for ‘harmonious’ intellection of the divineorder), and then explain this use of reason by appealing to the free will.

The important issue here, though, is not that Steno has identified thecircularity of Leibniz’s account, but that he has done so on the basis ofa rival confessional theological anthropology. In fact Steno’s criticism isgrounded in the Catholic teaching that the subject of reason must begraced with a degree of moral regeneration, hence freedom of will, before

Philosophical theology

pursuing rational knowledge of the good. The religious character of thebishop’s Christian anthropology is thus a pointer to the religious char-acter of the Philosopher’s Platonic one. In fact both anthropologies maybe regarded as specific ‘ascetic’ means for programming a particularrelation to the self and way of life. In treating rational intellection asdependent on a prior sacerdotal regeneration of the will, Stenostaunchly limits the ‘power of the keys’ to the Catholic clergy. Leibniz’sneo-Platonic treatment of rational intellection as the source of purity ofwill should thus be seen as a rival theological anthropology, aimed atmaking the philosopher morally self-generative.

In this light it comes as less of a surprise to observe that Leibniz’s treat-ment of evil is an improvisation on patterns of thought already elab-orated in early-seventeenth-century metaphysical theology. Sparn, werecall (.), argues that reconciling the fatalism of ‘pagan’ moral anthro-pology with the Christian demands for free will and moral responsibil-ity is the constitutive problem for metaphysical discussions of evil. ForLutheran metaphysicians such as Balthasar Meisner the problem washow to reconcile the ‘privative’ Aristotelian conception of evil – as theimperfect realisation of an entelechy or substantial form – with theChristian conception of sin as the freely chosen transgression of divinelaw. This is something that Meisner’s dualistic framework allows him toovercome by treating mankind’s first sin as a transgressive choice thatcorrupted the human faculties, making humanity’s imperfect realisationinto the outcome of a positive choice – the choice of a flawed metaphys-ical nature. For their part, Sparn argues, the Calvinist and Catholicmetaphysicians held a much more strongly ‘metaphysical’ conception ofradical evil. In treating evil as ontologically embedded either in matteror in the flesh – just in fact as Leibniz locates it in the rational monad’ssensory imperfection – they find it much harder to escape the conse-quences of pagan fatalism (Sparn , –). Given our immediateconcerns, however, it is not the differences between these various formu-lations that matter but their similarities. For all of them arise as theolog-ically impelled attempts to reconcile the pagan philosophical andChristian theological conceptions of evil, in keeping with the constitu-tive historical task of Christian university metaphysics as such. Inattempting the same reconciliation – moreover in attempting it in pre-cisely the same terms as its theological predecessors – Leibniz’s theodicyremains on the terrain of Christian metaphysical theology. The impor-tant historical difference of course is that Leibniz was pursuing this

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

exalted task outside the theology faculty, as an unconsecrated or, better,as a self-consecrating metaphysician.

We may conclude therefore that the exoteric rationalisation of theol-ogy in Leibniz’s philosophical theology was underpinned by a profoundsacralisation of philosophy and the philosopher. The main differencebetween Leibniz’s metaphysical theology and Lutheran Schulmetaphysik isthat the latter permitted escape from the damning circle between intel-lectual imperfection and moral corruption via the regeneration of thesubject that came with Eucharistic participation in the Logos. Somewhatunexpectedly, Leibniz’s trans-confessional Platonic universalisation ofthe rational subject removed this escape route. Ostensibly requiring noprior moral qualification of the capacities, Leibniz’s rational subject isalways already saved or, equivalently, always already damned. In the lan-guage of the Monadology, the damned soul reflects the cosmic order froman imperfect viewpoint, whereby its intellectual capacity represents adegree of perfection determined by the sensory impressions to which ithas been subject in that place: ‘It is not in the object but in themodification of their knowledge of the object that the monads arelimited. They all move confusedly toward the infinite, toward the whole,but they are limited and distinguished from each other by the degrees oftheir distinct perceptions’ (Mo, § ). The one way of avoiding the hatredof God arising from the imperfect viewpoint is to achieve that knowl-edge of the harmony of good and evil in the cosmic order which has theeffect of harmonising the soul itself. But this knowledge representsanother, more perfect, vantage point in that order and is simply notavailable to those still mired in their confused sensory impressions. In theConfessio, this state of affairs is captured in Leibniz’s doctrine that soulsdiffer only by virtue of their location in the cosmic order. Given that thislocation determines their respective moral identities, it would be as vainfor a damned soul to blame God for its reprobation as it would for apeasant boy to blame his father for not marrying a queen (CP, –).

For our purposes, the significance of this striking figure lies not itsfaintly shocking callousness, but in what it tells us about the moralsignificance that Leibniz ascribed to his philosophical theology. We havealready observed that it is only the contemplative metaphysical view-point – with its capacity to harmonise the intellect through the ‘thoughtof harmony’ – that permits souls to achieve the inner tranquillity thatattunes them to the divine order and hence redeems them from sin. Thismeans, however, that the moral–intellectual natures characteristic of

Philosophical theology

particular places in this order are differentiated only through theiradherence to the metaphysical viewpoint. In other words, Leibniz’smetaphysics itself now appears as a ‘saving truth’, occupying the samesoteriological space as the confessional theologies it was intended toreplace. Moreover, given the complete incapacity of Leibniz’s rational-ism to differentiate between philosophical error and moral sin – betweenthe inattentiveness of the intellect and the corruption of the will – thenit may be legitimate to punish those who adhere to erroneous doctrinesor even to compel them to adhere to a true metaphysics. We will returnto these possibilities at the end of the chapter, when discussing Leibniz’sviews on the decriminalisation of heresy.

For the moment we can conclude that Leibniz’s metaphysics is indic-ative of a profound re-ordering of the cultural relations between theol-ogy and philosophy; for it makes metaphysics itself into a ‘saving truth’,acceptance of which is the condition of membership of a new elect. Incomparison with the twin strategies employed by the civil philosophers– the privatisation of theological truth and the desacralisation of civilauthority – Leibniz’s philosophical theology is thus symptomatic of aquite different cultural strategy. It represents the ‘neo-confessional’transformation of Protestant university metaphysics into a supra-politi-cal metaphysical rationalism. This is grounded in the exalted spiritualdeportment of the metaphysical sage who now claims the confessionaltheologian’s right to direct the civil authority in accordance withtranscendent truths. Such is the transformation that gave birth toLeibniz’s political metaphysics and metaphysics of law.

.

In our Introduction we observed that the seventeenth century witnessedthe clash between two kinds of natural jurisprudence. From Aquinasthrough Melanchthon to Suárez and Althusius, scholastic or ‘Christian’natural law had maintained the theological basis of civil authority bymodelling the person as a being capable of natural knowledge of divinemoral law (Haakonssen , –). This allowed political sovereigntyto be treated as the earthly form in which such persons exercised their‘natural right’ to order the moral communities that are the realisation ofthis law (Tierney , –). As the discipline charged with recon-ciling natural and revealed knowledge, university metaphysics played akey role in the formulation of neoscholastic natural law doctrines duringthe seventeenth century. It taught men how they might accede to natural

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

knowledge of divine laws through the spark of divine reason, and howthe civil community could mirror or foreshadow the heavenly one, ifonly men would associate in accordance with the moral law.

It was just this claim to special insight into transcendent law that wasrepudiated by the civil philosophers. They saw it as an instance of theclerisy’s attempt to maintain its civil power, thereby jeopardising the des-acralisation of the state. This is what led Pufendorf and Thomasius, inthe aftermath of the Thirty Years War to reconstruct natural law fromwithin, seeking to give it a form that would reflect the secularisation ofcivil governance that had taken place in the political–jurisprudentialsphere. The full exposition of this reconstruction is reserved for ourchapters on the two civil philosophers. For the moment we may observethat – despite the longstanding and deep-rooted failure of philosophicalhistorians to differentiate clearly the two forms – this civil natural lawdiffered fundamentally from the metaphysical form that it was born tocombat. Rather than treating man’s natural knowledge of transcendentmorality as the foundation of social order, the new civil natural law sawsuch knowledge claims as a central problem for social order – given therecent profound and bloody disagreements over transcendent morality.It therefore sought a new natural law foundation for society, finding thisin man’s capacity to change his own moral nature, through the institu-tion of civil sovereignty, in the interest of civil security. This meant thatethics would be subordinate to the end of social peace and to the lawsof the only institution capable of attaining this end, the sovereign terri-torial state. It is no surprise, therefore, that civil natural law was pro-foundly and vehemently anti-metaphysical. For it identified themetaphysical image of the person, or the image of the metaphysical per-sonage – the rational being capable of governing itself and society onthe basis of transcendent rational and moral laws – as the intellectualicon of confessional society. It sought to replace this image with variousvoluntarist and neo-Epicurean conceptions of man. The civil philoso-pher’s Epicurean man is a creature whose passions not only remove himfrom divine intellection but also threaten him with utter destruction,leaving him only enough knowledge of the natural law – now focused insheer survival rather than spiritual perfection – to institute the sovereignwho would enforce it.

Despite the fact that he did not write a full natural law system, Leibniz’svarious writings on this theme are of great historical significance. Theyrepresent the key transitional form in which the neoscholastic metaphys-ical natural law of the confessional period was modified and passed into

The metaphysics of law

the eighteenth century, where it would be resumed by Kant among others.Patrick Riley thus illuminates our understanding of Leibniz by treatinghis central natural law doctrine – the theory of a ‘universal jurisprudence’common to the religious and civil domains – as deeply rooted in theChristian–Platonic anthropology and cosmology of the Discourse onMetaphysics and the Monadology (Riley , –). Yet we must be carefulnot to treat Leibniz’s natural law as simply an alternative theory of justiceto that offered by Hobbes and Pufendorf – especially not as a superiorone. As we have begun to see, these conflicting doctrines were notgrounded in theoretical ideas but in the grooming of certain kinds ofperson possessed of distinctive intellectual deportments. Moreover, atstake in their disagreement was not a theoretical victory but something farmore consequential: the right to configure the relation between spiritualand political governance in civil society. In fact all of the participants tothis great intellectual conflict were advisors to governments that wereattempting to reprogramme this relation in the aftermath of a protracted,vicious, and destructive series of religious civil wars. Once this is recalled,then Leibniz’s proposal to refound law and politics in a transcendentmorality may lose something of the warm glow that surrounds it in manymodern commentaries; for this of course was the longstanding impera-tive of neoscholastic natural law. Further, in discussing his philosophicaltheology, we have seen that Leibniz’s rationalism is not as far removedfrom theological metaphysics as it first seems. In any case, approachingLeibniz’s philosophy in this manner gives us a new insight into the hostil-ity displayed in his Opinion on the Principles of Pufendorf (), which takes usto heart of Leibniz’s version of ‘Christian’ natural law.

As we have already noted, Leibniz’s commentary on Pufendorf ’s DeOfficio Hominis et Civis arose in response to a prelate’s concern regardingthe suitability of Pufendorf ’s natural law ‘as a topic of instruction for theyoung’ (PW, ). Given the steadily increasing use of the De Officio inProtestant universities in the early eighteenth century, and given ouraccount of the two forms of natural law as rival ‘comportment educa-tions’, this pedagogical concern takes on its full significance. As SieglindeOthmer has shown, in making the central doctrines of his massive DeJure Naturae et Gentium () available in an epitome suited to the capac-ities of undergraduates, Pufendorf ’s De Officio was a potent means of dis-seminating the new detranscendentalised ethics and secularised politicsof civil philosophy. Commenting on Barbeyrac’s French translation ofthe De Officio () for the Huguenot Diaspora, Jacques Bernard, editorof the Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres, prophesied that here it would be‘the magistrate, the military man, the businessman, the artisan . . . who

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will find the rules of their conduct’ (Othmer , ). This, of course,was precisely what Leibniz and the Christian natural jurists were afraidof. It comes as no surprise therefore that Leibniz’s commentary takes theform of a warning (monita), stressing not only the intellectual errors ofPufendorf ’s natural law but more especially its moral corruption andsocial danger.

We noted in our introductory comments that Leibniz identifies threecentral errors in Pufendorf ’s work. First, focusing on the De Officio’s strictseparation of natural and revealed knowledge, and its attendant uncou-pling of man’s temporal happiness from his eternal felicity, Leibnizattacks Pufendorf ’s restriction of natural law to the end of secular civilwelfare (PW, –). This restriction, he argues, renders the science inca-pable of its divine objects, confines it to merely civil duties and, inexcluding the soul’s immortality, robs it of the normative force flowingfrom the whole economy of divine rewards and punishments. Leibniz’snext target is Pufendorf ’s stipulation that natural law applies only toman’s external actions (PW, –). When joined with its corollary – thatthe inner purity of man’s soul is a matter of revelation to be dealt within a completely separate discipline of moral theology – this stipulation,Leibniz argues, is an ‘excessively hard and objectionable doctrine’. Notonly does it jeopardise ‘universal jurisprudence’ by detaching civil fromreligious law, it also threatens to exclude ‘Christian philosophers’ –moral philosophers and natural theologians – from the sphere of adetranscendentalised natural law. It does so by assigning their privilegedobject – the question of the mind’s inner conformity to a pure reasonand will – to the domain of revealed theology. Finally, confronting thevoluntarist character of Pufendorf ’s account of the ‘efficient cause’ ofnatural law, Leibniz argues that in deriving natural law duties from the‘command of a superior’, rather than from the ‘eternal truths’ of adivine mind, Pufendorf destroys the rational and moral basis of naturallaw. Like Hobbes’, Pufendorf ’s voluntarism removes all capacity tojudge earthly tyrants, by equating justice with their positive law; and,again like Hobbes’, it also threatens to turn God into a divine tyrant, byrobbing us of insight into the norms that govern his actions and makethem praiseworthy. Against Pufendorf ’s secularising and naturalisingvoluntarism, Leibniz thus mobilises his own theo-rational metaphysics:

Neither the norm of conduct itself, nor the essence of the just, depends on[God’s] free decision, but rather on eternal truths, objects of the divine intel-lect, which constitute, so to speak, the essence of divinity itself; and it is rightthat our author is reproached by theologians when he maintains the contrary;because, I believe, he had not seen the wicked consequences which arise from

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it. Justice, indeed, would not be an essential attribute of God, if he himselfestablished justice and law by his free will. And, indeed, justice follows certainrules of equality and or proportion [which are] no less founded in the immut-able nature of things, and in the divine ideas, than are the principles of arith-metic and of geometry. (PW, )

Leibniz concludes his commentary by constructing a dilemma forPufendorf ’s voluntarism (PW, –). Pufendorf, he observes, havingderived natural law duties from the superior’s command, also, andinconsistently, adds that the superior must have ‘just causes’ for this coer-cion. But, Leibniz argues, either these just causes are justifying reasons,in which case political obligation flows from the reasons not thecommand; or they are not, in which case the sovereign’s commands lacka justifying reason, thereby reducing right to the sheer exercise of might.As we shall see, this way of establishing mutually exclusive relationsbetween philosophical reason and political sovereignty was destined tohave a big future in the history of philosophy.

The most striking feature of Leibniz’s criticisms is the light that eachof them sheds on the real historical contest that was driving his attackon Pufendorf ’s natural law: namely, the struggle over the properconfiguration of religious and civil governance, and over the appropri-ate roles of religious and civil intellectuals. In objecting to Pufendorf ’srestriction of the end of natural law to civil welfare, Leibniz was actu-ally resisting the ‘detranscendentalising’ of ethics that the civil philoso-phers were attempting to bring about in the Protestant arts faculty.Similarly, in attacking the De Officio’s confinement of natural law toman’s external actions – to the complete exclusion of any concern withhis inner intellectual purity – Leibniz was not only taking offence atPufendorf ’s expulsion of ‘Christian philosophers’ from the domain ofnatural law. He was also resisting the exclusion of transcendent moral-ity from the exercise of civil authority, which was of course central toPufendorf ’s desacralisation of political governance. Finally, in criticisingPufendorf ’s voluntaristic reconstruction of duties in terms of thecommand of a superior, Leibniz was repudiating the most fundamentalof the civil philosopher’s desacralising strategies. For this was the way inwhich Pufendorf excluded all transcendental justifications for sove-reignty – the exercise of natural or divine right, the defence of the faith,the preservation of the godly community – reconstructing political andethical duties in terms of unconditional obedience to commands issuedfor the preservation of social peace. In each of these regards Leibniz wasof course defending the rival way of configuring the relations betweenreligious (transcendental–moral) and civil governance. In fact, he was

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defending some version of a state of affairs in which civil ethics and pol-itics would continue to be subordinated to a (natural) moral theology.This ‘resacralising’ subordination of the civil to the transcendentalwould be executed not by the old clergy but by a new kind of philosoph-ical theologian. The natural or rational theologian would be qualified tojudge the inner moral condition of the citizens of the moral communitythrough his own metaphysical participation in the transcendent ‘wiselove’ that defined God’s universal justice.

Given that this was the historical stake, it is somewhat surprising thatso many commentators should continue to treat Leibniz’s attack onPufendorf as simply part of a general theoretical critique of voluntar-ist (‘Hobbesian’) ethics and politics (Barreau ; Riley , ;Schneewind ; Sève ; Sève ). Given our present interest ingrasping the historical conflict between civil and metaphysical naturallaw, this ‘intellectualist’ approach suffers from three main deficiencies.First, it uproots Leibniz’s anti-political natural law from the circum-stances in which it conflicted with civil natural law over the correct intel-lectual configuration of civil and religious authority. In particular, byconsidering him as a genius, it underestimates Leibniz’s dependency onthe neoscholastic natural law of a particular group of Lutheran aca-demic theologians and natural jurists. Second, those adopting thisapproach generally assume that Leibniz’s rationalist construction ofjustice is ‘philosophically’ superior to Pufendorf ’s voluntarist one. Butthis assumption obscures the degree to which Leibniz’s rationalism is infact the instrument for a rival ‘spiritual grooming’, and thereby a rivalconception of the role of religious intellectuals in civil life. Finally, wecan identify the assumption that Leibniz’s maintenance of continuitybetween civil law and transcendent morality – between human anddivine justice – is ethically and politically superior to Pufendorf ’s desac-ralising separation of these spheres. In regarding this continuity asrestoring a higher justice (wise love) to the otherwise brutish reign ofpolitical utility, commentators like Barreau and Sève seem to forget theextraordinary brutality that had flowed from the meshing of transcen-dent morality and civil authority in the confessional state. In any case, aswe shall now see, each of these assumptions is unsuited to understand-ing the historical reality of Leibniz’s legal and political metaphysics.

.. Leibniz and Christian natural law

We have already encountered the so-called Christian natural jurists, inour Introduction. As one of his theology professors at the University of

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Leipzig, Valentin Alberti had warned the young Thomasius againstreading Pufendorf. Later, when Pufendorf ’s arguments had done theirwork, Alberti was among the phalanx of neoscholastic philosophers andtheologians who had lobbied the Saxon court to prevent Thomasiusfrom lecturing on theological matters, forcing him to seek refuge at theUniversity of Halle in (Grunert b; Lieberwirth ). AsThomas Ahnert has argued, this dispute cannot be understood as aconflict between religious orthodoxy and enlightenment rationalism(Ahnert , –). In fact, in deriving natural law from necessarymoral laws common to God and man, Alberti is the rationalist, notThomasius. Thomasius thus attacks Alberti for overestimating thepowers of reason, precisely because Alberti’s theo-rational conceptionof moral law is incompatible with the civil philosopher’s detranscenden-talising of ethics and desacralising of politics.

Leibniz, we have observed, insists that theologians like Alberti areright to attack Pufendorf for denying that natural law is grounded in‘eternal truths common to God and man’ (PW, ). This, we maypropose, is in part because Leibniz’s rationalism is much closer toAlberti’s Platonised scholasticism than is generally understood. But it isalso because Alberti belonged to a network of Lutheran natural juristswhose work Leibniz knew intimately. In his still-indispensable study ofthe intellectual sources of Leibniz’s natural law, Hans-Peter Schneiderdemonstrates the degree to which Leibniz’s legal metaphysics dependson fundamental forms of thought already elaborated within thisnetwork (Schneider ). Its members – Alberti, David Mevius,Valentin Veltheim, David Placcius, Samuel Strimesius, Johann Prasch,and Samuel Rachel – may be regarded as heirs to the early-seventeenth-century Protestant Schulmetaphysik of Meisner, Scheibler, and theMartinis, even if some of them had already moved away from the earlier‘dualistic’ form of Lutheran metaphysics towards a more Platonic meta-physical rationalism. In fact, the central lesson of Schneider’s study isthat the Lutheran natural jurists had moved in this direction – develop-ing a doctrine of natural law based on the metaphysical recovery of thea priori norms underpinning both divine and human justice – in orderto combat the secularising effects of Hobbes’ and Pufendorf ’s anti-metaphysical separation of religious and civil authority (Schneider ,–, –).

Schneider’s study thus shows us that even after the Treaty ofWestphalia – whose granting of toleration to the three main confessionsmarked a decisive (political–jurisprudential) desacralising of politicalgovernance – Lutheran academic metaphysicians and theologians

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continued to argue for the subordination of civil authority to transcen-dent moral truths, insisting, for example, that the Decalogue remaincentral to natural law hence to the civil law it founded. Further, inshowing the striking similarity between this Lutheran metaphysics oflaw and Leibniz’s – particularly in their common appeal to the notion ofa self-purifying ascent to the divine forms of justice – this study raises thequestion of the degree to which Leibniz too sought to continue the sub-ordination of civil authority to transcendent truth, although this is not aquestion that interests its author.

Schneider identifies two main intellectual tendencies that emergedfrom the heartland of Lutheran university metaphysics and convergedin Leibniz’s doctrine of natural law. The first is a renewed stress on theorthodox doctrine of man in his regenerate condition – the status integrit-atis. Through this moral anthropology of regenerative man, certainLutheran jurists and metaphysical theologians sought to combat the vol-untarism and statism of civil philosophy, by invoking man’s remnantcapacity for governing himself through participation in divine intellec-tion. The legal metaphysicians David Mevius (–) and SamuelRachel (–), the Leipzig theologian Valentin Alberti (–), andthe Regensburg jurist Johann Ludwig Prasch (–) – the latterinvoked by Leibniz in his attack on Pufendorf – were leading represen-tatives of this line. They argued that man’s intellectual and moral facul-ties had not been completely corrupted at the Fall; that he retained aremnant of their perfect spiritual form in the shape of his imago Dei orGod-likeness; and that through this residuum of his spiritual nature manacceded to a partial awareness of the divine law that governed his societywith God in the state of innocence. This dim outline of divine lawinscribed in human reason – that is, in the spiritual remnant of the soul– is natural law.

The ‘nature’ on which this conception of natural law is based is notthe passional nature posited by the civil philosophers, but man’s divineimaginal nature. The fact that this nature is in turn identified with ‘ratio-nal being’ or reason is an appropriate pointer to the theological charac-ter of seventeenth-century rationalism. Samuel Rachel’s De Jure Naturaeet Gentium Dissertationes (Dissertations on the Law of Nature and Nations) of – which, in addition to a ferocious denunciation of Hobbes, contains arebuttal of Pufendorf ’s recently published and similarly titled work –provides us with a typical formulation of this theme:Come, then, let us see what is the utility of a knowledge of Natural Law. Hewho rightly pursues his enquiry into it will in the first place get in some sort tounderstand what is that Image of God [imago Dei] in which man was originally

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created. That it consisted before everything in Justice and Holiness, we have theApostle’s warrant (Ephesians, ch. , v. ; Colossians, ch. , v. ), so that man cannot only readily ascertain the Divine will and distinguish what is to be done fromwhat is to be left undone, but also can exactly conform his own will and conductto the Divine will and render perfect obedience to the Law of God . . . Nowafter the first-create threw away this perfection by their disobedience (Romans,ch. , v. ), and had begotten issue in their own likeness (Genesis, ch. , v. ), andthe light of their intellect was darkened and the inclinations and disinclinationsof their appetites had begun to be varied and vast, there was yet left to manReason; and this Reason, contriving to retain a certain degree of Rightness, rec-ognised and promulgated the Law of Nature which is written on the heart, andcontrolled and curbed by its authority the activities of the soul. For althoughfallen man can not exactly conform his will to the Divine will and his conductto the standard of Natural Law, yet it remained as binding on him after as beforethe Fall. (Rachel , –)

Here we have a clear indication of the manner in which the Lutherannatural lawyers could use a rationalistic version of the imago Dei doctrinein order to defend the notion of a natural or philosophical knowledge ofman’s inner conformation to divine law. This was their way of combat-ing Hobbes’ and Pufendorf ’s strict separation of revealed and naturalknowledge and the consequent uncoupling of religious and civil law.

On this basis Rachel – who taught Prasch and some of whose worksbear Leibniz’s (probable) annotations – could argue that underpinningthe civil law to which man is subject as the citizen of a particular state,there is a higher natural law to which he accedes via his imago Dei orreason. This natural law is in fact the Christian lex caritas or law of love,epitomised in the two commandments to love God and to love one’sneighbour. Rachel’s identification of the imago Dei with man’s partiallyregenerate reason – which allows him a natural philosophical access tothe law of love – suggests that the neoscholastic natural jurists tied loveto justice in essentially the same way as Leibniz. In fact the figure of theimago Dei remains central to Leibniz’s metaphysics, helping to give shapeto the transcendent character of man’s capacity for philosophicalreflection, as we are reminded by the following passage from the Discourseon Metaphysics: ‘It is also only by virtue of the continual action of Godupon us that we have in our soul the ideas of all things; that is to say,since every effect expresses its cause, the essence of our soul is a certainexpression, imitation, or image of the divine essence, thought, and willand of all the ideas which are comprised in God’ (DM, § ). In arguingthat man accedes to the law of love by refurbishing the capacity for purethought through which he participates in divine intellection, Leibniz was

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thus improvising on one of the central themes of the Lutheran legalmetaphysics.

The second way of tethering civil law to Christian natural law – orjurisprudence to Christian metaphysics – involved the direct applicationof the central doctrines of Protestant Schulmetaphysik as found, forexample, in the works of Christoph Scheibler. Here Schneider focuseson the grounding of natural law in the fundamental figure of God’s‘emanation’ of the universe’s ontological and moral order, through hisintelligising of the non-contradictory essences and his willing of themost perfect world. It was on this basis that the professors of philosophyand theology Valentin Veltheim (–) and Samuel Strimesius(–) argued that God’s intellection is natural law, as it gives thingstheir ‘whatness’ and actions their goodness (Schneider , –). Itis not the ‘command of a superior’ therefore that provides the ontolog-ical and cognitive ground of natural law but ‘right reason’ (recta ratio),either originally – because man’s reason once agreed with God’s – or inits devolved imaginal form. Human society is thus a reflection of divinecommunity, as human beings are intellectual substances emanating fromthe divine intellection of the universe and imitating this intellection eachaccording to their degree of perfection.

The extent to which Leibniz drew on this metaphysics or ‘onto-theol-ogy’ of natural law is conveyed in a striking figure of thought in his‘Meditation on the Common Concept of Justice’ of c. – which, inits turn, anticipates some of the central doctrines of the Monadology of. Having commented that microscopic examination of ‘insects andother small things’ reveals the design of the divine craftsman in his work,Leibniz continues:

Thus by much stronger reasons craftsmanship and harmony would be found inlarge things, if we were capable of seeing them as a whole. And above all theywould be found in the whole economy of the governance of spirits, which arethe substances most resembling God, because they are [themselves] capable ofrecognising and of producing order and craftsmanship. And as a consequence,one must conclude that the author of things, who is so inclined to order, willhave had particular care for it with respect to those creatures who are naturallysources of order, in proportion to their perfection, and who alone are capableof imitating his craftsmanship. But it is not possible that this should seem so tous, in this small particle of life which we live here below, and which is an incon-siderable fragment of a life without bounds which no spirit will lose. To con-sider this fragment separately is to consider things like a broken stick or like thebits of flesh torn from an animal, where the craftsmanship of its organs cannotsufficiently appear. (PW, –)

The metaphysics of law

Finally, if Leibniz’s metaphysical grounding of natural law thus bearsa strong resemblance to Alberti and Veltheim’s neoscholastic version,then his use of this metaphysics as a weapon against Pufendorf alsofollows theirs. In fact, in rejecting Pufendorf ’s treatment of natural lawas the means to man’s civil security, Alberti and Veltheim appeal to thegrounding of natural law in morally necessary divine truths. This ofcourse anticipates Leibniz’s main line of attack on Pufendorf. Leibniz’sinsistence that: ‘Neither the norm of conduct itself, nor the essence ofthe just, depends on [God’s] free decision, but rather on eternal truths,objects of the divine intellect, which constitute . . . the essence of divin-ity itself ’ is virtually identical with Alberti’s identification of the law withGod’s intellection of necessary truths. Far from being ‘minor Germanwriters’ who had failed to develop a metaphysics of law harmonious withPlatonistic rationalism, the Lutheran natural jurists were in fact the pow-erful source of just such a legal metaphysics, elaborated specifically tocombat the desacralising of law and politics being pursued by the civilphilosophers. This is not to deny, of course, that Leibniz’s natural lawwas in a certain sense more secular than Veltheim’s, Alberti’s, andRachel’s. But even here the differences are not as great as is generallyargued, as we shall now see.

.. Metaphysical abstraction and the spiritualisation of law

Riley, we recall, regards Leibniz’s Platonistic philosophical recovery ofthe divine perfections or essences – specifically the perfection of divinejustice – as the mode in which he integrated Christian law (the lex caritas)in a scientific and enlightened philosophical jurisprudence (Riley ,). We have already questioned the adequacy of this account asapplied to Leibniz’s metaphysics in general, arguing instead that his doc-trine of metaphysical abstraction should be regarded as the architectureof a particular kind of spiritual exercise. This is an exercise that ties theformal purity of concepts to the moral self-purification of the philoso-pher, who thinks them via ascent from impure sensory ideas to the self-perfecting intellection of the perfections or essences. Now we can applythis historical reconstruction to the role of abstraction in Leibniz’s meta-physics of law in particular. In doing so we discover that while Leibniz’slegal metaphysics is indicative of a certain secularisation of Christiannatural law – in the sense that Leibniz’s more intensely Platonistic con-struction was designed for use beyond the sacral confines of the theol-ogy faculty – it is also symptomatic of a profound spiritualisation of civiljurisprudence.

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

Leibniz applies this method of abstraction to the construction ofnatural law by treating justice as one of the hidden perfections. Touncover the intelligible notion or formal reason of justice, it is necessaryto withdraw from the domain of empirical or positive laws and seek thepure concepts on which ‘universal justice’ is based. Universal justice,Leibniz declares, is a pure concept formed from the combination ofwisdom, love, and goodness. Wisdom in fact comprises metaphysicalknowledge of the perfections or hidden forms emanating from God’sintelligising of the cosmos, while love is the happiness intelligent beingsfind when conforming themselves to these perfections, and goodness‘that which serves in the perfection of intelligent substances’ (PW, ).Rather than viewing it as a mere semantic clarification, Leibniz thusregards his formal definition of justice – justititia est caritas sapientis, justiceis the love of the wise man – as actually recovering the perfection of purejustice from the husks of empirical law, and, presumably, as perfectingthe one who recovers it.

Leibniz’s ‘formal’ or a priori construction of the ‘intelligible notion’of justice – the notion of caritas sapientis or love governed by wisdom –thus provides the architecture for a particular exercise in intellectual self-transformation. This is designed to lead those ‘worthy to be philoso-phers’ from their experience of empirical law to the intellection of thepure form of justice. Leibniz offers a remarkable short demonstration ofthis exercise in a letter to the Electress Sophie of Hanover in :

Justice is charity conformed to wisdom.Wisdom is the science of felicity.Charity is a universal benevolence.Benevolence is a habit of loving.To love is to find pleasure in the good, perfection, the happiness of another.And by this definition one can resolve . . . a great difficulty which is importanteven in theology – how it is possible that there be a nonmercenary love,detached from hope and from fear, and from all concern for our own interest.It is that the felicity, or the perfection of another, in giving us pleasure, entersimmediately into our own felicity.For all that pleases is desired for itself, and not through interest.It is a good in itself, and not a useful good.It is thus that the contemplation of beautiful things is agreeable in itself, andthat a painting by Raphael moves him who looks at it with enlightened eyes,though he derives no profit from it. (Leibniz in Riley , –)

The key to this construction of formal justice lies in a doctrine that wefirst encountered in our brief observation of the metaphysics of Albertthe Great (.). This is the doctrine that humans may only participatein the divine perfections or intelligibles – here the perfection of justice –

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to the extent that they perfect that part of themselves which they sharewith the true bearer of metaphysical knowledge, God. They do this, itwill be recalled, by purging their intellects of all those sensory imagesand inclinations that tie them to the mere worldly utility of things. In thisway they rise to contemplate the intelligible at the point of its emana-tion from God, where it brings happiness, or is good, merely by beingbeheld. This figure of thought is the source of the longstanding ‘anti-consequentialist’ character of metaphysical ethics. For, unlike materialbeings, whose ends lie outside them in the form of a multiplicity of goodsor desires, divine intelligible being contains its own good, or, equiva-lently, is ‘good in itself ’, hence constitutes the highest good simply byrealising its own end. For such a being there is no gap between acting inaccordance with the law and realising its own desires – between good-ness and happiness; for, in realising an immanent end, intelligible beingwills only its own perfection, possessing only good inclinations.

In the case of Leibniz’s metaphysics of law, knowledge of the ‘per-fection’ or pure concept of justice (as wise love) is thus dependent on oneperfecting oneself. This requires purging one’s love of all sensuous inter-est, so that it becomes nonmercenary happiness in intellectual perfec-tions, and purging one’s wisdom of all sensory-empirical adhesions, sothat it becomes the a priori science of this happiness. To see this conceptof justice one must therefore look on it with ‘enlightened eyes’. In con-crete historical terms this means that only those individuals who haveundertaken these specific self-purifying intellectual exercises – associatedwith the cultivation of an ‘illuminated’ intellectual deportment – will bedeemed to have insight into the pure concept of justice. This intellectualethos and deportment is of course that of the university metaphysician.By offering a new way of reconciling philosophy and theology, this figurebegan to emerge as an authoritative moral–social personage, character-ised by the possession of what may be termed ‘secular holiness’. In val-idating his wisdom through the personal purity he displays in risingabove merely ‘interested’ or utilitarian conceptions of law (as the meansto social peace), the metaphysical sage warrants the higher concept ofjustice, as wise love, through the moral and epistemological prestige ofhis persona. He thus functions as humanity’s proxy in the divine order,mediating its supra-mundane concept of justice not through his humanunderstanding but via the condition that he must imitate divine wise lovein order to know it.

This tying of the abstract or pure concept of justice to the spiritualpurity of the metaphysical philosopher was already a feature of the

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Lutheran metaphysics of law on which Leibniz was drawing. In his crit-icisms of Osiander, Rachel, for example, treats abstraction as the meansby which the philosopher passes from the actual (‘positive’) law suited toman’s fallen state to the natural law governing his incorrupt or regener-ate condition. ‘Herein, unless I err, he [Osiander] has come to griefthrough defining the Law of Nature as Habituation (habitum) and sayingthat it resides like something habitual (his own word) in the mind of man,the result being that he does not contemplate the Law of Nature in itselfand in the abstract [in se & in abstracto], nor the mind of man as it oughtto be, but the latter in a corrupt state and the former (habit forsooth!)contaminated and, so to say, submerged by a flood of vices’ (Rachel, ). That men often act contrary to natural law as a matter of factis thus no impediment to the teaching that man’s reason or imago Dei con-tains a pure version of the law. For observation of facts, Rachel argues,pertains only to man’s conduct as a fallen creature – indeed, is itselfsymptomatic of this conduct – while the natural law is acceded to by arationality that returns man to his regenerate state, revealing the a priorinorm by which he ought to act: ‘Nor can any objection be based on actsdone contrary to the Law of Nature . . . For in such cases attention mustbe directed not to what is actually done but to what ought to be done,there being all the world of difference between Fact and Law’ ().

Leibniz’s normative-rationalist separation of the ‘is’ from the ‘ought’– of the facts of ‘law’ (loi, Gesetz) from the norms of ‘right’ (droit, Recht) –is thus indicative of something far more momentous than a theoreticalor methodological imperative. For it arises in fact from the gap that uni-versity metaphysics opens between human and divine intellection. Thisin turn is the pedagogical condition for the purifying self-transformationthat validates the metaphysician’s insight into what justice ought to be –the love of the wise – through the manner in which this personage imi-tates the quasi-divine perfection of wise love. The metaphysician’s claimto accede to the pure or formal concept of justice is warranted only bythe self-purifying exercise in abstraction through which he acquires‘enlightened eyes’. The content of this concept may then be provided bythe Christian caritas doctrine, because the metaphysician is now himselfthe personification of Christ’s ‘loving’ way of thinking and willingjustice.

On the one hand, this procedure subjects the New Testament theol-ogy of love to a philosophical sublimation, as it now appears as thecontent of the formal philosophical concept of justice. On the otherhand, though, the same procedure forces civil jurisprudence to undergo

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a profound spiritualisation; for now the formal concept of justice is onlyavailable to a personage who has completed the self-purifying ascent toits divine intellection. The formalisation and spiritualisation of jurispru-dence are thus inseparable in Leibniz’s legal metaphysics. They are heldtogether by the ascetic link between the formal purity of a concept thatreveals itself prior to all experience and the moral purity of the specialpersonage in whom such a concept can be thought. Leibniz’s normativelegal metaphysics – his ‘anti-empiricism’ or ‘anti-positivism’ – is thusreally a symptom of the legal metaphysician’s morally prestigious intel-lectual ethos and self-exalting spiritual deportment.

It is this method of speculative self-purification that allows Leibniz totreat the empirical civil legal order as the devolved or imperfect level ofan onto-theological hierarchy grounded in God’s rational intelligising ofa cosmic legal order. Like the Lutheran natural jurists and political theo-logians on whose work he drew, Leibniz finds a jurisprudential footholdfor his metaphysics by superimposing this hierarchy on the central pre-cepts of Roman law. Using these (now) transcendentalised principles ofRoman law, he is able to construct a natural law that subordinates posi-tive civil law to the Christian metaphysics of a cosmic legal order.

Leibniz’s rational construction of natural law thus takes the form ofa metaphysical–moral ladder, converting the three Roman law precepts– hurt no-one (neminem laedere), give each his due (suum cuique tribuere), andlive honourably (honeste vivere) – into an ascent from empirical–utilitarianforms of justice to the ‘universal justice’ characteristic of God’s rationalgovernance of the cosmos. At the lowest level, strict justice, character-ised by the precept to refrain from harming others, and typical of thenatural law theories of Hobbes and Pufendorf, has as its object only thepreservation of civil peace. One step up from this we find the level ofequity or charity, characterised by the precept of rendering each his due,and finding its object in the state’s conversion of mutual benevolenceinto reciprocal rights (PW, pp. –). Love only becomes truly disinter-ested, however, when we pass beyond the level of ‘political’ law alto-gether. Here we reach the ultimate stage of natural law which ischaracterised by the precept to live piously, and which requires insightinto God’s rational governance of the cosmos in order to reveal the‘legal’ character of duties having no bearing on civil peace. Leibniz’smetaphysical hierarchy thus permits him to pass from civil law to a syn-thesis of natural and Christian law, using his method of abstraction fromthe empirical to the transcendent in order to establish the continuum:

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

It is on this ground that justice is called universal, and includes all the othervirtues; for duties that do not seem to concern others, as, for example, not toabuse our own bodies or our property, though they are beyond [the power of]human laws, are still prohibited by natural law, that is, by the eternal laws of thedivine monarchy, since we owe ourselves and everything we have to God. Now,if it is of interest to the state, of how much more interest is it to the universethat no one use badly what is his? So it is from this that the highest precept ofthe law receives its force, which commands us to live honorably (that is, piously).It is in this sense that learned men have rightly held . . . that the law of natureand of nations [ius naturae et gentium] should follow the teachings of Christianity,that is, ta anvtra, the sublime things, the divine things of the wise, accordingto the teaching of Christ. (PW, )

Despite the similarity of this construction to those developed by theLutheran natural jurists and political theologians, we have observed thatsome commentators regard Leibniz’s natural law as a major secularisa-tion and rationalisation of his theological sources (Riley , ;Schneider , ). Leibniz, they argue, while not completely secular-ising natural law, provides rational concepts or Gründe for the theologi-cally authorised doctrines of his predecessors. This gives rise to an‘enlightened’ scientific conception of natural law, while simultaneouslyrepelling Hobbes’ and Pufendorf ’s more fully secular, but merely empir-ical and utilitarian conception. Yet, without denying the secularisingaspect signalled in Leibniz’s natural law – specifically, the transfer of asacral doctrine from theologians to academics and savants – we maynonetheless propose that these commentators underestimate the degreeto which Leibniz sought to preserve the sacral character of this doctrinein its new secular setting. For Leibniz, we recall, the giving of rationalGründe is itself a sacralising exercise in intellectual self-purification –‘Knowledge of reasons perfects us’ – leading him to conceive enlighten-ment as a refurbishing of the spark of divine intellection or imago Dei.We have already observed the closeness of Leibniz’s rationalism to itstheological sources, noting in particular Rachel’s treatment of the imagoDei as the remnant of ‘right reason’ through which man ‘recognised andpromulgated the Law of Nature which is written on the heart, and con-trolled and curbed by its authority the activities of the soul’ (Rachel ,). For both Leibniz and Rachel, access to the pure or formal conceptof justice requires a pure or regenerate reason – requires, that is, theintellectual ascesis the determines what counts as purity of thought andwill for a certain theocentric culture – which is precisely what makestheir rationalism theological. The main difference between them is that

The metaphysics of law

Leibniz’s more purely ‘philosophical’ (Platonistic) conception of self-purifying abstraction allows him to expand the ambit of the regenerateto include metaphysical intellectuals as a type of secular holy estate.

Finally, therefore, it is quite misguided to treat Leibniz’s rationalistconception of justice as inherently superior to Pufendorf ’s empirical–voluntarist one – as if Leibniz had in fact recovered the rational groundof positive law, while Pufendorf ’s ‘failure’ to do so condemned him toaccept the irrational exercise of power. We have already noted that thisview – deploying the characteristic rationalist distinctions between lawand justice, power and reason – is very widespread in post-Kantian phil-osophical history. Just how close this historiography is to Leibniz’s ownhostile view of the civil philosophers is clear in these remarks from the‘Meditation’:

The error of those who have made justice dependent on power comes in partfrom confounding right and law. Right cannot be unjust, it is a contradiction;but law can be. For it is power that gives and maintains law; and if this powerlacks wisdom and a good will, it can give and maintain quite evil laws: buthappily for the universe, the laws of God are always just, and he is in a positionto maintain them, as he does without doubt, although this has not always beendone visibly and at once, for which he has, no doubt, good reasons. (PW, )

Yet, in the light of our reconstruction of the ascetic role of abstrac-tion in his legal metaphysics, Leibniz’s claim to have insight into the pureconcept of justice should be understood in terms of the moral–episte-mological prestige of the metaphysical personage. For it is a claim thatmay be credited only within the ethos that treats this abstraction as theself-purifying ascent to the divine intelligibles, undertaken by a beingwho is deemed to mediate between divine and human justice. This wayof understanding Leibniz’s legal rationalism re-establishes its historicalsymmetry with Pufendorf and Thomasius’ voluntarist and empiricalconstruction of natural law. For, as we have suggested, their voluntarismand empiricism is also fundamentally a moral doctrine linked to acertain comportment education. This education, however, was dedi-cated to forming intellectuals who would no longer presume to subordi-nate civil law and politics to transcendent moral truths acceded to in thequasi-sacerdotal person of the metaphysician. In other words, Leibniz’srationalism and Pufendorf ’s ‘empiricism’ are not in fact contradictorytheories, but rival and autonomous ways of configuring the relationbetween religious and political laws, operating through the spiritualgrooming of the personages responsible for administering these laws.

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

.. The continuum of spiritual and civil governance

The final obstacle to an adequate historical understanding of Leibniz’snatural law is the widespread view that in maintaining a continuumbetween civil and theo-rational law, Leibniz provides a necessary moralcorrective to Hobbes’ and Pufendorf ’s desacralising restriction ofnatural law to ‘utilitarian’ commands issued by the sovereign for the endof security. In presuming that the continuum between law and moralityis founded in reason, this view fails to comprehend its true grounds – inthe resacralising cultural politics of metaphysical natural law. We haveobserved that Leibniz’s reconfiguration of the relation between civil andreligious governance takes place by tying the just exercise of civil powerto the spiritual–intellectual superiority (purity) of the personage who isto exercise it. The personage in question is of course the sage who, inaccordance with longstanding Christian-Platonic topoi, is regarded asqualified to influence the exercise of civil authority on the basis of hisself-sacralising ascent to transcendent concepts of justice and goodness(Brown a, –). In concrete historical terms, the figure of themetaphysical sage provided the Lutheran natural jurists such as Albertiand Veltheim with a comportment-ideal suited to their own claims to arole in the civil governance of the godly state. In extending the rights ofthis quasi-sacral figure to the ‘philosopher’ more broadly, Leibniz wasadapting this ideal to his own role as political metaphysician and courtsavant to several German Kleinstaaten.

In tying civil authority to the moral superiority of the sage, Leibniz’snatural law begins to exhibit some of the central features of Germanpolitical metaphysics. In the first place, this figuration leads to the chili-astic doctrine of the ‘withering away of the state’, or the redundancy oflegal coercion for beings who have fully recovered their capacity forrational self-governance. In the course of his attack on Pufendorf, wethus find Leibniz insisting that: ‘Whoever, indeed, does good out of alove for God or his neighbour, takes pleasure precisely in the action itself(such being the nature of love) and does not need any other incitement,or the command of a superior; for that man the saying that the law isnot made for the just is valid. To such a degree it is repugnant to reasonto say that only the law or constraint make a man just’ (PW, ).

At the same time, the same figuration leads Leibniz to claim politicalauthority for the sage himself. For, to the extent that not all individualswill be capable of achieving the level of spiritual self-purification needed

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for rational self-governance, then they will have to be subjected to thepurified will of the sage:

After this one can say absolutely that justice is goodness conformed to wisdom,even in those who have not attained to this wisdom. For, apart from God, themajority of those who act according to justice in all things, even against theirown interest, do in effect what a wise man would demand who found his pleas-ure in the general good; but in certain cases they will not act as sages themselves,not being sensible of the pleasure of virtue. And in these cases, where their dis-interestedness would not be compensated either by praises or honors, nor byfortune, nor otherwise, they would not have acted in a way most conforming toprudence. But as soon as they consider that justice conforms to the will of a sagewhose wisdom is infinite and whose power is proportioned to it, they find thatthey would not be wise at all (that is, prudent) if they did not conform them-selves to the will of such a sage. (PW, )

In fact, says Leibniz, ‘it must be conceded that those who have notreached this point of spiritual perfection are only susceptible of obliga-tion by hope and fear’ (PW, ). In other words, by providing a meta-physical grounding for political obligation in rational self-governance,Leibniz provides a metaphysical rationale for the exercise of politicalcoercion, treating it as compensating for the lack of intellectual perfec-tion required for self-governance. He thereby re-establishes the sacrallinkage between political and spiritual governance, which now appearsin the demand that political authority be exercised to enforce the capac-ity for rational self-governance that will eventually make such authorityredundant.

The twin icons for this envisaged reunification of politics and moral-ity are the sage–prince and the ‘unlimited’ or total society. If justice is aperfection fully manifest only in the self-perfecting personage of themetaphysical sage, and if the exercise of civil power is legitimatedthrough its capacity to compensate for the lack of such perfection inothers, then a just political order requires the unification of reason andpower, the sage and the prince. For Leibniz, coercion is only legitimateinsofar as it is used to turn ‘right into fact’, and this requires theunification of power and reason in a single person: ‘Those to whom Godhas given at once reason and power in a high degree are heroes createdby God to be the promoters of his will, as principal instruments’ (Leibnizin Riley , ). With the figure of the sage–prince, Leibniz recapit-ulates the political-theology of godly government in its modern form, asgovernment driven by the desire to realise reason and advised by politi-cal metaphysicians.

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

At the same time, if human society is ultimately ordered by the uni-versal justice of man’s ‘society with God’, then the civil authority gov-erning human society must apply universally, to all areas of life. Thesage–prince will thus rule over an unlimited or total society: ‘Everysociety is either unlimited or limited. An unlimited society concerns thewhole life and the common good. A limited society concerns certain pur-poses, for example, trade and commerce, navigation, warfare, and travel’(Lm, ). We also recall Leibniz’s assertion contra Pufendorf that socialjustice may not be limited to the end of ‘human tranquillity’, but that ‘ina universal society governed by God every virtue . . . is comprehendedamong the obligations of universal justice; and not only external acts,but also all of our sentiments are regulated by a certain rule of law’ (PW,). In other words, through his image of the sage–prince ruling over anunlimited or total society, Leibniz is envisaging the resacralised state inits modern enlightened form. This would be a state in which politicscould be grounded in morality through the enforcement of a metaphys-ical ethics, perhaps in the form of a civil religion.

Several commentators have argued that in maintaining a continuumbetween civil and theo-rational law, Leibniz provides a necessary correc-tive to Hobbes’ and Pufendorf ’s desacralising restriction of natural lawto ‘utilitarian’ commands issued by the sovereign for the end of socialpeace. Riley, for example, argues that in maintaining a continuumbetween the lower forms of justice dedicated to the negative preservationof security, and the higher form oriented to universal benevolence andthe perfection of society, Leibniz offers a more rational, generous, andbenevolent vision of the legal–political order than Hobbes or Pufendorf(Riley , –). Similarly, Sève claims that by establishing a hier-archical ascent from the ‘narrow sense’ of justice, as the maintenance ofsecurity, to higher form of caritas sapientis, Leibniz supplements the merelynegative conception of justice with the positive ethic of doing good forothers. Sève regards this as opening up the prospect of a complete moraltransformation of society. For his part, Hervé Barreau argues thatbecause Leibniz’s natural laws form a graduated hierarchy leading fromcivil security to spiritual perfection, so too do the natural rights foundedon them: ‘One must conceive this gradation as the call of moral con-sciousness in each person, who sees the degrees of good, and undertakesto actualise them by beginning with the lower degrees, without ever repu-diating them, since the higher degrees contain the lower ones, which theybring to greater perfection’ (Barreau , ). In fact, Barreau goes sofar as to suggest that without this call to a higher moral consciousness, the

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mere ‘Hobbesian’ grounding of justice in security contains the ‘germ oftotalitarianism’, as can be seen from Hobbes’ interference in the affairsof the church.

In neglecting the historical circumstances in which law was firstuncoupled from morality, however, this viewpoint forgets a cruciallesson. Once a continuum has been established between the exercise ofcivil authority and the pursuit of a higher moral good, then the desiredoutcome – the moral elevation of political power – is inexorably shad-owed by its far less desirable twin: namely, the exercise of civil authorityin order to enforce (someone’s) higher moral good. Yet it was their expe-rience of the catastrophic consequences of such enforcement that hadled the civil philosophers to break the nexus between civil authority andtranscendent morality in the first place.

We catch a glimpse of the constitutive ambivalence of rationalistpolitical metaphysics in this regard in Leibniz’s attitude to the decrimi-nalisation of heresy. In a little-cited text reviewing Thomasius’ argu-ments for such decriminalisation, Leibniz takes Pufendorf ’s mostfamous follower to task for failing to see that purity of will may be depen-dent on purity of doctrine (Gr, , –). Thomasius had argued, firstly,that as an intellectual error heresy lies beyond all civil compulsion and,second, that even where it arises from corruption of the will, heresy isnot a punishable offence; for only conduct disturbing the republic fallsinto this category, and the prince may not use intellectual or moral erroras a criterion for such conduct (ADS, –, –). In rejecting thesearguments – that heresy concerns intellectual errors lying beyondhuman judgment and outside the reach of civil coercion – Leibniz con-tends that the ‘theoretical heretic’ can be compared to the law-breakerwho refuses to look at the laws the prince has proclaimed for his salva-tion: ‘Hence, to the degree that in heresy he might fail to understand aquestion of great importance for his salvation, wickedness is combinedwith lack of learning and, what is more, through this insight we cannotdeny that heresy deserves punishment’ (Gr, , ). If, thus, not downrightevil, intellectual error is nonetheless deserving of punishment as it arisesfrom culpable negligence and results in the great evil of damnation.

Recalling our earlier discussion of the reciprocal relation whichLeibniz establishes between intellectual error and the corruption of thewill, it is not surprising that he regards this culpable failure of learningas itself arising from a prior failure to purify the intellect: ‘Again, the willto learn can arise from the intellect if anyone pays attention to the greatimportance of having the intellect purified for things to be done well’

Leibniz’s political metaphysics

(Gr, , ). Given, though, that metaphysical philosophy is the means bywhich the intellect and will are purified, then it follows that if hereticsmay be punished for lacking the will to learn saving truths, they may becompelled to undergo the purifying discipline of metaphysics in order toacquire this will. The real danger residing in Leibniz’s rationalistidentification of heresy with crime, or sin with error, is thus not the oneimagined by the Theologian in the Confessio – that sins might be excused.It is rather that error might become punishable and metaphysicsenforceable. Leibniz’s conception of heresy as a crime is thus insepara-ble from a conception of rationalist metaphysics as the secular theologyfor an enforceable ‘rational faith’. In its battle with civil philosophy toresacralise the state, rationalist metaphysics would be tempted tobecome the natural theology for a new kind of confessional society.

The metaphysics of law

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

.

Born in and coming to intellectual maturity in the immediate after-math of the Thirty Years War, Samuel Pufendorf found himself con-fronted with the task of developing an ethics and politics suited to life inthe descralised states sanctioned by the Treaty of Westphalia. As a polit-ical–jurisprudential councillor at the courts of Sweden (–) andBrandenburg-Prussia (–), he had first-hand experience of theproblems such states confronted in attempting to establish deconfession-alised civil orders in the wake of protracted confessional conflict. In thiscontext, Pufendorf encountered university metaphysics – with its claimto ground political right in philosophically known transcendent reasonsand laws – as a major intellectual obstacle and institutional enemy. Inorder to render moral and political philosophy capable of comprehend-ing the gap that had been opened between civil and religious authority,Pufendorf had to ‘detranscendentalise’ it in a manner that would par-allel the desacralising of law and politics. This task – whose central textsare the De Jure Naturae et Gentium Libri Octo (On the Law of Nature and Nationsin Eight Books) of , its epitome of the following year, the De OfficioHominis et Civis juxta Legem Naturalem Libri Duo (On the Duty of Man andCitizen according to Natural Law in Two Books), and the De Habitu ReligionisChristianae ad Vitam Civilem (Of the Disposition of Religion in Relation to CivilLife) of – entailed a fundamental and far-reaching reconfigurationof philosophical, political, and moral culture. If today the true charac-ter and full extent of this reconfiguration are only just emerging, that isbecause, since its academic marginalisation at the end of the eighteenthcentury, Pufendorf ’s natural law has remained obscured, put in the darkby the interpretive canons of neo-Aristotelian and neo-Kantian meta-physics. In this chapter we show just how profound Pufendorf ’s reshap-ing of the early modern intellectual landscape really was.

If modern commentators have underestimated the scale ofPufendorf ’s reconstruction of moral and political philosophy, that isbecause they have failed to comprehend the gulf separating Pufendorf ’snatural law and the line of metaphysical natural law running from theneoscholastics through Leibniz to Wolff and Kant. As a result of thisfailure, it is widely assumed that Pufendorf ’s natural law was a continu-ation of the moral–philosophical attempt to contain the positive legalcommands of the sovereign within overarching moral norms. Thisassumption is particularly marked in modern Aristotelian and Kantianinterpretations, which assimilate Pufendorf ’s natural law to the meta-physical line by treating it as an attempt to formulate absolute norms forpolitics based on the figures of the moral community or the moral law.We will discuss representative instances of these interpretations in thefollowing section. For the moment, we may propose that both lines ofinterpretation fail to observe the degree to which Pufendorf ’s concep-tion of natural law is designed in fact to free the sovereign’s law-makingcommands from any effective appeal to higher moral norms. It is truethat Pufendorf distinguishes natural law from both (positive) civil lawand moral theology: ‘From the first flow the most common duties ofman, particularly those which render him capable of society [sociabilis]with other men; from the second flow the duties of man as a citizen livingin a particular and definite state [civitas]; from the third, the duties of aChristian’ (DOH, Pref., ). Yet it soon becomes clear that Pufendorf ’sprime concern is to drive a wedge between the duties of the Christianand those of the citizen, while the duties of the man and the citizen arein fact treated as convergent. For, we shall argue, in giving natural lawand positive law the same end – social peace – and in granting the sove-reign sole discretion to determine how the natural law should be enactedin the state’s positive laws, Pufendorf in effect makes natural law normsimmanent to the process of political governance through which citizensare formed.

In showing how deeply embedded it was in the political and theolog-ical circumstances of post-Westphalian Germany, political and theo-logical historians provide us with a sharper insight into the historicaldisposition of Pufendorf ’s natural law. In the illuminating introductionto his edition of the De Officio, James Tully argues that after the emer-gence of the post-Westphalian deconfessionalised sovereign territorialstate, ‘the question which underlies and orients Pufendorf ’s theory (andthe theories which he followed) is . . . how does one conduct oneself soas to become a useful member of such a society and polity’ (Tully ,

Introduction

xx–xxi). For his part, recalling Thomasius’ arguments on the complicityof metaphysics in the formalisation and enforcement of religion in theconfessional state, Detlef Döring argues that Pufendorf ’s voluntaristicexpulsion of moral theology from natural law should be seen as a meansof prising the levers of civil coercion from the hands of the clergy; thatis, as an instrument for the secularisation of political governance (Döringb). The truly remarkable characteristic of Pufendorf ’s enterprise,however, is that he undertook this desacralising separation of transcen-dent morality and civil authority by reconstructing the very disciplinethat had been designed to hold these spheres together, natural law. Thisobservation holds the key to understanding Pufendorf ’s natural law as acomprehensive civil philosophy.

In the first place, it provides an appropriate understanding of the rela-tion between Pufendorf ’s natural law and the other civil sciences thatwere engaged in the desacralisation of politics – Lipsian neo-Stoicismand Helmstedt political Aristotelianism in particular. In relegatingChristian natural law in favour of a Stoic political psychology or a tech-nical–instrumental science of political order, these civil sciences in effectsecularised politics by creating new foundations for it outside the sphereof Christian moral and political theology. But while this strategy mayhave succeeded in forging a detheologised political science and demea-nour for a ruling elite – Dreitzel characterises Helmstedt political scienceas an intellectual regime for the political nobility of absolute states – inmarginalising natural law it left untouched the very discipline that pro-vided politics with moral legitimacy. In detranscendentalising naturallaw itself, therefore, Pufendorf ’s aim was to provide the new desacralisedforms of political governance with a broad-based moral intelligibility.His reconstruction of natural law was intended to make it hospitable tothe idea that both ethics and politics were legitimately grounded in thecommands of a superior issued in accordance with the end of socialpeace. It is for this reason that the De Jure functions as a clearing-housefor the other civil sciences – Lipsian political psychology, Helmstedtpolitical instrumentalism, Hobbesian anti-clericalism, Bodinian sove-reignty theory, positive Staastrecht – assembling their several secularisingtactics, via the architecture of voluntarist natural law, into a single desac-ralising strategy. Pufendorf thus refers to his natural law as including ‘allmoral and civil teaching [doctrinam moralem & civilem] that is genuine andsolid’ (DJN, .ii., ). The object of this strategy was not to marginalisethe domain of natural law but to transform it, confining ethics and pol-itics to the horizon of social peace and civil governance, and consigning

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

the desire for salvation and transcendent truth to the separate sphere ofprivate piety.

Now we are better placed to grasp the historical circumstances fromwhich Pufendorf ’s natural law arose and that it was intended to meet.We recall that the endeavour to pacify the warring confessional statesand communities found its most potent intellectual instrument in posi-tive political jurisprudence (Staatsrecht), which offered the central meansof partitioning civil authority and transcendent truth, the search forcivility and the pursuit of salvation. In the great struggle to find religiouspeace that stretched from the Treaty of Augsburg in to the Treatyof Westphalia in , it was the Protestant political jurists who gradu-ally secularised the Empire’s legal and political culture and laid the con-stitutional groundwork for the system of sovereign territorial states.They did this, Martin Heckel argues, not through a new rational orsecular philosophy – most jurists remained committed Lutherans – butthrough a series of measures, driven by force of circumstance ratherthan force of reason, aimed at securing the legal–political coexistence ofthe confessions. The most important of these measures were the accep-tance of jurisprudence rather than theology as the prime political dis-course; the establishment of legal parity between the confessions withinthe juridical and political apparatus of the Empire; and, above all, theexclusion of the question of theological truth from the legal–politicalsettlements that ended religious Bürgerkrieg (Heckel , –). Still,despite resulting in a profound secularisation of the judicial and politi-cal apparatus, these changes were not aimed at the secularisation ofsociety as a whole. Driven by the exigencies of social pacification ratherthan an all-embracing ideology, and typically motivated by the desire ofthe faithful to preserve their particular confession amid the wholesalecarnage of the religious wars, this was a secularisation that stopped atthe cathedral door. It left the churches free to pursue their transcendentaims as voluntary associations, while excluding these aims from thesphere of civil governance (Heckel , –).

This gradualdisarticulation andre-orderingof the institutions of polit-ical and religious governance – which was the work of hundreds of name-less lawyers and statesmen and for which no philosophical genius mayclaim the glory – was arguably the most important cultural and intellec-tual transformation to take place in early modern Germany. In fact it pro-duced the characteristic political and moral topography of the modernstate. This emerged in the form of an apparatus of legal and politicalgovernance from which all ‘higher’ theological and metaphysical ends

Introduction

had been excluded in favour of the single end of security. Inside thisagnostic security envelope an array of religious, academic, and other‘social’ associations were free to pursue their absolute truths, so long asthey did so within the limits of social peace. If, therefore, Pufendorf ’snatural law doctrine enacts a fundamental partitioning of the ‘civilkingdom’ from the ‘kingdom of truth’ – the exercise of civil coercion fromthe pursuit of transcendent morality – this is not because he fell short ofthe dialectical reconciliation of philosophy and theology. Neither is itbecause, in excluding all appeals to transcendent right, his voluntarismdrove him into the arms of a state based on might alone. Rather, by enact-ing this separation Pufendorf was attempting to reshape the learnedculture’s prime discipline of ethical and political reflection, giving it aform that would comprehend the fundamental desacralisation of govern-ment and privatisation of religion that had already taken place in thepolitical–jurisprudential domain.

Now we begin to see the scale of the reconfiguration of ethical andpolitical culture contained in Pufendorf ’s natural law, and the depth ofthe gulf separating it from its metaphysical rival. In continuing toground civil authority in transcendent moral philosophy, metaphysicalnatural law – whether neoscholastic or rationalist – represented a cultu-ral formation of great intellectual strength and social power. The intel-lectual strength of this metaphysical natural law lay in the manner inwhich its Christian Platonic anthropology permitted the privilege oftranscendent insight to be claimed by the metaphysical personage, whothereby acquired a quasi-sacerdotal authority as a secular sage. Its socialauthority arose from the fact that through this anthropology ‘rationalist’metaphysics remained in touch with the central Christian symbols andrituals – particularly those associated with moral regeneration and sal-vation. Through the training of a metaphysically imbued clerisy, univer-sity metaphysics could thus engage a population whose moralphysiognomy was still deeply informed by these symbols and rituals. Onthe basis of the spiritual prestige attached to the metaphysical person-age, rationalist university metaphysics could instruct citizens in how theymight achieve moral perfection, even if this meant acting in accordancewith a conception of justice ‘higher’ than that embodied in the positivelaws of the state.

If, therefore, Pufendorf ’s De Jure begins by cutting the knot of meta-physical anthropology, that is because this is where the threads joiningcivil authority and transcendent truth are tied the tightest. Replacingthis anthropology with his own conception of man – as a being whose

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

passional nature is imposed by the divine sovereign and necessitates thecommands of the earthly sovereign – was the first step in Pufendorf ’sextraordinarily ambitious attempt to reshape the landscape of earlymodern German ethical and political culture. In showing how civilauthority could be separated from transcendent truth, this quasi-Epicurean anthropology held the key to a natural law designed to reflectthe desacralisation of government and the privatisation of religion, byforming a new kind of civil deportment for rulers and citizens:

But by far the greatest difference [between natural law and moral theology] isthat the scope of the discipline of natural law is confined within the orbit of hislife, and so it forms man on the assumption that he is to lead this life in societywith others [hanc vitam cum aliis sociabilem exigere debeat]. Moral theology, however,forms a Christian man, who, beyond his duty to pass this life in goodness, hasan expectation of reward for piety in the life to come and who therefore has hiscitizenship [politeuma] in the heavens while here he lives merely as a pilgrim orstranger. (DOH, Pref., )

We still have difficulty comprehending the depth of the changes tomoral and political philosophy entailed by this project. For, in order tofashion a persona for the citizen that would allow individuals to accedeto their civil obligations independently of their Christian moral person-ality, Pufendorf had to displace the Christian–metaphysical figuration ofthe person with a pluralistic construction that was perhaps unprece-dented in early modernity. This is a construction that relativises dutiesto the several statuses or personae occupied by individuals in the courseof civil life, while maintaining the duty of obedience to the civil state asthe ultimate parameter within which this variation takes place. In thusdetaching political and legal governance from transcendent morality,Pufendorf earned the hostility of metaphysicians from Leibniz to Kantand beyond. Regardless of their attacks on the allegedly ‘tyrannical’ or‘totalitarian’ implications of Pufendorf ’s doctrines, and notwithstandingtheir righteous defences of ‘freedom’, the cardinal sin of Pufendorfiannatural law in the eyes of metaphysical intellectuals has always been itsuncoupling of political sovereignty from moral truth. For in this separa-tion these intellectuals have seen both the dissolution of the ‘moral com-monwealth’ and of their own prestigious role in it, as the guardians of arational moral politics.

In continuing to frame civil duties by theorising the self-governingmoral personality or a self-perfecting moral community – the modernavatars of purified reason and the godly state – today’s moral philosophyremains inimical to the desacralisation of civil governance undertaken

Introduction

by Pufendorf. In fact, in an unhappy historical irony, it has used thesefigures of thought as its means of interpreting Pufendorf, thereby post-humously assimilating him to the culture of metaphysics that he soughtto destroy. The central symptom of this assimilation is the discussion ofPufendorf ’s conception of political obligation in terms of either the self-realising community or the self-legislating personality. We can begin toexcavate the depths of Pufendorf ’s natural law by recovering his concep-tion of political obligation from beneath these neo-Aristotelian and neo-Kantian treatments of it.

.

Pufendorf formulates his conception of political obligation in a well-known passage in the De Jure Naturae et Gentium:

An obligation is properly laid on the mind of a man by a superior, that is, byone who has both the strength to threaten some evil against those who resisthim, and just reasons [justae causae] why he can demand that the liberty of ourwill be limited at his pleasure. For when a person has such power, after he hasonce signified what reward awaits those who obey his will, and what evil conse-quences those who resist it, there must necessarily arise in the faculty of reasona fear mingled with reverence [metum reverentia temperatum]; a fear occasioned bysuch a person’s power, and a reverence arising from consideration of the causes,which should be sufficient, even without the fear, to lead one to receive thecommand on grounds of good judgment alone. (DJN, .vi., )

Modern commentators have reclaimed this conception for moral philos-ophy by interpreting the superior’s ‘just reasons’ in terms of morally jus-tifying and justified reasons, as they variously understand the latter.

In his influential neo-Aristotelian account, Horst Denzer explicatesthe justness of the superior’s reasons in terms of man’s ‘rational andsocial nature’ and the state’s role in cultivating or completing this nature.Its role in perfecting man’s moral nature gives the state itself a naturalmoral character: ‘For Pufendorf there are conditions attached to the factthat the nature of man demands the state. The concept of nature mustbe taken in its teleological sense, [meaning] namely that man strives forperfection rather than indulging his inclinations and passions. Thenatural character of the state is therefore the final consequence ofhuman nature’s capacity for cultivation’ (Denzer , ). For Denzer,therefore, the superior’s reasons are just to the extent that his commandsorder the kind of society in which man’s rational and social faculties maybe perfected, but not otherwise. On this basis, Denzer interprets

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

Pufendorf ’s version of the ‘social contract’ as one that establishes recip-rocal rights and obligations, between individuals possessing naturalrights to development, and a political sovereign who must be obeyed tothe extent that he develops the moral nature grounding these rights(, , –).

In the most important of the neo-Kantian interpretations, J. B.Schneewind construes the justness of the superior’s reasons not in termsof the realisation of a natural good, but in terms of the autonomy of therational faculty responsible for issuing laws: ‘Pufendorf is here sayingthat the good God intended us to achieve with our special nature is notrestricted to natural good. It must include a good indicated by the higheraspect of our nature – reason and will’ (Schneewind , ). Stressingthe non-teleological character of Pufendorf ’s conception of entia moralia,Schneewind treats the superior’s commands as anticipations of Kant’sself-legislating reason, ascribing their justness to the ‘higher’ rationalpart of human nature in which they originate. On this view, mere rec-ognition of the higher rational source of the superior’s commandsshould be enough to create the sense of obligation: ‘Here Pufendorfseems to be suggesting that simple recognition that a law is a divinecommand should awaken a motive for compliance in us’ (). As aresult, Schneewind treats Pufendorf ’s recourse to political sanctions asthe outcome of his failure to grasp how reason itself might impose polit-ical obligations, ascribing this failure to Pufendorf ’s inability to recon-cile moral entities and physical beings: ‘Obligation is a moral entity. Assuch it has no causal power of its own. Desires, as part of our physicalnature, can cause us to act in space and time; but recognition of obliga-tion gives us a consideration or reason for action that does not operatein the field of force in which desires operate’ (). We have heard thiscritique of Pufendorf before, of course, in Leibniz’s comment that: ‘Ifreasons restrain even by themselves, why did they not restrain by them-selves, before fear arose?’ (PW, ). Apparently, moral and political phi-losophy could not solve the problem of how moral reason has force inthe political world until Kant formulated his doctrine of self-legislatingreason and our ‘reverence’ for it, thereby providing a final explication ofthe ‘justness’ of the superior’s commands.

For all their subtlety and interest, neither of these readings capturesPufendorf ’s construction of political authority. In fact both of them re-import the categories of moral philosophy to a civil ethics from whichthey have been expelled. For the ‘just causes’ warranting the superior’simposition of obligation are neither those provided by the telos of man’s

Moral philosophy and political obligation

rational and social nature, nor those flowing from a higher self-obligat-ing aspect of his nature, ‘reason and will’. Rather, in the summary for-mulation of the De Officio, they are the relations of vulnerability andprotection, need and care, linking beings seeking tutelage to an agentpossessing the power to provide it:

The reasons which justify a person’s claim to another’s obedience are: if he hasconferred exceptional benefits on him; if it is evident that he wishes the otherwell and can look out for him better than he can himself; if at the same time heactually claims direction of him; and, finally, if the other party has voluntarilysubmitted to him and accepted his direction. (DOH, .ii., )

In keeping with their moral–philosophical outlooks, the neo-Aristotelianand neo-Kantian accounts interpret the civil power’s justness in termsof its moral superiority. But, while ruling out sheer force as a legitimatesource of political duties, Pufendorf simultaneously rules out moralexcellence: ‘We are of the opinion, consequently, that the right to lay anobligation upon another, or, in other words, to command another andto prescribe laws, arises not merely from strength alone, or even fromyperoxh [superiority], or excellence of nature’ (DJN, .vi., ).Moreover, despite Schneewind’s claims to the contrary, it seems clearthat the superior’s right to command through laws is indeed specifiablein terms of a good independent of the laws themselves. This good,though, is not the summum bonum of the perfection of man’s rational andsocial nature, but something far more restricted – political security. Wemay propose then that the just causes which, together with the power tocoerce, constitute superiority and obligation are grounded not in the‘higher nature’ of man’s rational or perfectible being, but in a differentnormative source altogether: namely, in the relations of dependency andprotection linking a being in need of security to one who is in a positionto provide it. For Pufendorf, it is not their conformity to a self-legislatedmoral law or a self-perfecting moral community that justifies the supe-rior’s commands. Rather they are justified by the fact and to the degreethat they are issued by an agent who claims and has been granted theabsolute right to govern others in exchange for the care and protectionthat he offers them.

Pufendorf ’s construction of obligation should thus be seen as part ofhis larger rescaling and reconfiguration of the relation betweentranscendent rationality and civil governance, moral philosophy andpolitical jurisprudence. Through this construction he seeks to detach thejustification of civil governance from its moral–philosophical moorings

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

– the person’s perfectible moral nature, self-legislating moral reason –and to tie it instead to the concrete relations of dependency and protec-tion established in order to achieve security. There can be little doubtthat this was Pufendorf ’s way of reconstructing academic ethics and pol-itics in response to the period of confessional warfare and the subse-quent political–jurisprudential desacralisation of civil governance. Thereconstruction of political obligation in terms of the provision of secur-ity alone may be regarded as Pufendorf ’s way of building the historicalreality of murderous moral communities into the foundations of ethicsand politics, transforming the ‘is’ of the Thirty Years War into the‘ought’ of a detranscendentalised ethics and secularised politics.

Pufendorf ’s programme remains obscured in modern Aristotelian andKantian commentaries because they are grounded in moral anthropolo-gies – of the self-perfecting community and the self-governing rationalbeing – dedicated to maintaining the synthesis of moral and politicalgovernance that he was intent on destroying. In order to recoverPufendorf ’s conception of obligation the historian must therefore becareful not to allow these rival anthropologies to infiltrate his historicalreconstruction. Historians who presume, for example, that in eschewingthe notion of self-legislated moral law Pufendorf ’s project collapsed intopolitical utilitarianism, are declaring their de-facto adherence to theanthropology of self-governing rational being. But, as I have indicated,this anthropology was explicitly repudiated by Pufendorf as inimical tohis desacralising programme. The same remarks apply to the presump-tion that Pufendorf ’s conception of obligation was, or should have beengrounded in the Aristotelian anthropology of man’s self-perfecting ratio-nal and social being. As we shall soon see in more detail, Pufendorf ’s con-struction of obligation is grounded in its own moral anthropology. Thishas little in common with the Aristotelian figuration of man’s socially per-fectible moral nature or the Platonic image of his self-legislating rationalbeing. Instead, Pufendorf elaborates a quasi-Epicurean anthropology ofman as a being whose weakness (imbecilitas) dictates that he requires soci-ability to survive, but whose vicious passions and divided mind erode soci-ability and leave him prey to extravagant violence and mutual destruction(DJN, .i.–, –; DOH, .iii.–, –). Pufendorf thus derives thenatural law norms of sociability solely from the need to achieve civilpeace, exclusive of the requirements to perfect man’s moral nature orrespect the enactments of his ‘higher’ rational being. This is the way hesought to exclude moral theology and philosophy from the domain ofnatural law. In doing so he conceives of a politics independent of all

Moral philosophy and political obligation

higher moral ends – purely in terms of the relations of obedience andsuperiority required for the security of beings whose capacity for mutualviolence is no less definitive of them than their need for sociability.

Understood in this way, Pufendorf ’s construction of political obliga-tion allows no space for the gap that Leibniz and Schneewind positbetween the superior’s ‘just causes’ and his ‘strength to threaten someevil against those who resist him’. In deliberately rejecting the metaphys-ical anthropology – and, with it, the division between man’s higher self-legislating rational being and his lower sensuous inclinations anddesires – Pufendorf ’s natural law is untroubled by the split betweenrational self-governance and instrumental coercion formulated withinthis Christian-Platonic doctrine of man. In accordance with hisEpicurean anthropology, Pufendorf treats human nature as fundamen-tally driven by rationally uncontrollable and socially dangerous passions.Further, in keeping with his voluntarist repudiation of metaphysicalrationalism, Pufendorf treats human reason not as a higher self-legislat-ing intellectual nature, but as a limited capacity for empirical knowledgeand deductive ratiocination: ‘Man’s nature, then, is so constituted thatthe human race cannot be secure without social life and the human mindis seen to be capable of ideas which serve this end’ (DOH, .iii., ).Man possesses just enough reason to know that his passionate and dan-gerous nature is incapable of attaining sociability through reason.

In explicating his conception of obligation Pufendorf indeed says that‘a reverence arising from a consideration of the causes . . . should besufficient, even without the fear, to lead one to receive the command ongrounds of good judgment alone’ (DJN, .vi., ). But this is not thearticulation of a rational–moral source of obligation incommensuratewith the administration of fear. For the consideration of causes is under-stood not in terms of philosophical reflection on self-governing rationalbeing, but in terms of political reflection on the debt of obediencearising from the relations of guardianship and dependency, sub- andsuper-ordination: ‘For no man can well avoid having respect for the onefrom whom he has received many favours, and so if it appears that thesame person wishes me well, and can take better care for my future thancan I, and he also claims at the same time a right to direct my acts, thereis no apparent reason why I should wish to question his power’ (DJN,.vi., ). It is the incapacity of human beings to accept political obli-gation on the basis of such consideration – an incapacity arising fromthe strength of their jealous and ambitious passions – that establishes thecontinuity between justifying considerations and the power to coerce.

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Rather than representing a ‘Hobbesian’ principle ambiguously distinctfrom the capacity for ‘rational’ consideration of the just causes, thepower to coerce which compensates for this incapacity actually forms acontinuum with such consideration. For man’s inability to obligatehimself through such consideration is itself one of the determinantsdriving the institution of an office of sovereignty possessing the powerto coerce. The capacity to punish non-compliance, and the justness ofthe causes for issuing commands, are thus conjoint determinants of thesuperiority that creates obligation:

From what has been said, one must surely agree that mere strength is notenough to lay an obligation on me at the desire of another, but that he shouldin addition have done me some special service, or that I should of my ownaccord consent to his direction . . . From these two sources, we believe, flows theforce of obligations, which, as generally understood, restrain as by an innerbond the liberty of our will. But because the natural liberty of the human willis not destroyed by any moral bond, and because also among the vast majorityof mortals the inconstancy or wickedness is so great that they prevail over thesereasons for command, something else is needed to control the wild passions ofmen, with a greater force than a feeling of shame and an appreciation of whatis right . . . Now we feel that nothing could have such an effect, but the fear ofsome evil to come, upon the breach of an obligation, from the hand of astronger person, to whose interest it was that there should be no departure fromthat obligation. And so, in the final analysis, obligations get their stability fromforce, and from the consideration that the one who desires to procure theirobservance has so much power, either inherent in him or given him by others,that he can bring some grave evil upon the disobedient. (DJN, .vi., –)

For Pufendorf, then, the normativity of political obligation – the justify-ing ground for the superior’s commands – comes not from the impera-tives of a rational nature that is good in itself, or, indeed, from a rationaland social nature that requires such commands for its perfection. Rather,it comes from the relations of dependency and protection that humanbeings have established on the basis of empirical knowledge of their pas-sionate and destructive nature and in pursuit of the end of security.

There is thus no unbridgeable gap between just reasons and politicaldiscipline for Pufendorf. This is in part because the reasons in questionarise from concrete political circumstances rather than self-legislatingKantian reason. But it is in part because the ‘reasons’ – of vulnerabilityand protection – legitimating the superior’s command of his subjects arealso those legitimating his use of coercion against them, should they failto obey. For, in basing the political pact on the chastened recognition oftheir own incapacity for rational self-governance, the subjects not only

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give the sovereign the right to determine what is in the interest of theircollective security, they also give him the right to exercise a supremecoercive power over them, whenever their self-interest threatens todeviate from this collective one. It is not, therefore, that Pufendorf failsto explain how moral entities can have effects in the physical world – howreason alone can move the will. It is, rather, that this problem has nomeaning for him, being precluded by his self-conscious rejection of thenotion of man’s higher rational nature or self-legislating moral reason.For Pufendorf, political duties are not grounded in transcendent moralnorms, but in norms of political discipline. These are norms immanentto the historical circumstances in which the sovereign state emerged asthe bulwark against man’s limitless capacity for self-destruction and civilmayhem. In short, the sovereign is not the moral superior of his subjects,only their political superior.

The justness of the sovereign’s use of political coercion thus flowsneither from man’s failure to obey a moral law that should be respectedon rational grounds, nor from his failure to adhere to the law of a moralnature that impels him to ‘strive for perfection rather than indulging hisinclinations and passions’. Rather, it comes from man’s chastened recog-nition of his rationally ungovernable and permanently flawed passionalnature. It is this recognition – the knowledge that consideration of thejustness of the superior’s right to command will not by itself lead to obe-dience – that allows Pufendorf to build political coercion into the officesof sovereign and subject, thereby redefining the contours of politicalright. The continuum joining the consideration of just causes to theexercise of political coercion is thus provided not by man’s rational beingbut by his passional nature. For it is in a series of progressively more pow-erful ways of governing this fractious and violent nature that considera-tion of the sovereign’s just causes for command joins forces with his useof coercion, when consideration alone proves insufficient to secure com-pliance. This means that political coercion acquires its legitimacy not asa means of enforcing the self-governance that rational beings should beable to exercise by and on themselves – the rationalist model that con-tinues to tie civil authority to transcendent truth. Instead, coercionacquires legitimacy as a means of enforcing the relations of dependencyand guardianship that human beings have imposed on themselves, viathe institution of civil sovereignty, as a means of achieving social peace.As far as Pufendorf is concerned, the need for political coercion is notjust a temporary phenomenon, arising from the failure of rational self-governance. Rather, it is a permanent and constitutive feature of politi-cal right and of a civil state which will never ‘wither away’.

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

To conclude this reconsideration of Pufendorf ’s conception of polit-ical authority, we must return to the centre of our attention some-thing that remains off-stage in moral–philosophical interpretations ofPufendorf: namely, his ‘privatisation’ of salvation or moral regeneration.We have already observed that Pufendorf ’s restriction of civil right tothe political relations required for social peace was reciprocally andinseparably related to a second act of demarcation: his restriction of thepursuit of moral regeneration to the non-political sphere of religiousfaith or private moral striving. This partitioning of civil governance fromtranscendent morality – whose crucial formulation is provided by the DeHabitu Religionis Christianae ad Vitam Civilem – was Pufendorf ’s centralresponse to the problem of religious civil war. If, as some critics haveclaimed, it divorces political governance from transcendent moralitythen it does so in order to place transcendent morality beyond politicalenforcement. The religious neutrality of the state and the political neu-tralisation of the church are the twin pillars of Pufendorf ’s natural law.This larger partitioning of civil and spiritual governance needs to bekept in mind when considering the nature of the continuum thatPufendorf establishes between the just causes for the sovereign’s com-mands and the use of coercion to enforce them. For, given that these justcauses refer only to the relations of dependence and protection requiredfor civil peace, then their enforcement never touches the pursuit oftranscendent morality and religion. This remains free of political coer-cion precisely to the extent that it has been detached from the exerciseof civil power, which offers us a good pointer to the statist character ofPufendorf ’s liberalism. From Pufendorf ’s viewpoint, in seeking trans-cendent moral grounds for the exercise of political coercion – in self-perfecting moral community or self-legislating rational being – moralphilosophers risk making transcendent morality politically enforceable.As we have seen in our discussion of Leibniz’s theory of punishment andhis treatment of heresy, this was not a groundless fear.

We cannot appreciate the true character Pufendorf ’s reconstructionof ethics and politics until we realise that he is no longer in the businessof attempting to derive political obligation via metaphysical reflectionon man’s rational and moral being. In fact his objective is to ensure thatthis would no longer occur. Pufendorf was among the first to see that thedesacralisation of civil governance meant that individuals would have tolearn to accede to their civil duties independently of cultivating an ‘inte-gral’ moral personality – a practice which would have to be restricted tothe domain of private spiritual striving. From now on human beingswould have to accede to their civil duties not through self-purifying

Moral philosophy and political obligation

recovery of a higher metaphysical being, but through empirical reflec-tion on their violent historical nature, for whose governance they hadinstituted a new moral persona – that of the citizen. In the system ofpost-Westphalian states, political authority could have only one end –security – and political obligation only one source: obedience to thesupreme power that provided it.

All attempts to justify obligation via a true philosophy of man’s ratio-nal and moral being – attempts that grounded obligation in a self-per-fecting moral community or a self-legislating rational being – wouldtherefore be inimical to the new disposition of civil governance and civilduties. Such attempts refuse to accept Pufendorf ’s desacralising segre-gation of the political subject from the subject of truth – the ‘civilkingdom’ from the ‘kingdom of truth’ – and they continue to obscureour understanding of this objective today. To reach this objective thecitizen had to be transformed from a person who accedes to his civilduties through insight into moral truth to one who does so throughacceptance of his need for civil security. This could not be done withoutremoving metaphysical moral philosophy – neo-Aristotelian and neo-Platonic – from academic ethics and politics and replacing it with a civilphilosophy suited to the moral comportment of the subject of thedeconfessionalised state. That is the fundamental task of Pufendorf ’snatural law.

To understand the manner in which he carried out this task we mustcome to terms with three fundamental features of this natural law, fea-tures which are also decisive points of departure from metaphysicalmoral philosophy. First, we must observe that for Pufendorf the bearerof duties is no longer an integral moral personality or communitythrough which access might be gained to an ultimate rational or moralground for obligation. Rather, the bearer of duties has become the‘imposed’ status or ‘office’, the entia moralia; and the duties attaching tooffices have no integrating source or form in such figures as the rationalbeing or the moral community. They take their shape instead from theends for which the offices have been imposed – pre-eminently from theend of security. Second, as a result of this, human beings may not accedeto the natural law – that is, to the duties attaching to the ‘natural status’imposed on them by God – through philosophical reflection on the ratio-nal and moral grounds for this imposition. As human reason and moral-ity are internal to the nature created by this imposition, man may andcan only deduce natural law through chastened observation of his‘empirical’ nature and the conduct most likely to preserve it. Finally, this

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means that the pact through which man enters the ‘civil state’ is not ameans of enacting or perfecting his higher rational being. Rather, thispact is the form in which human beings impose a new moral being onthemselves: the ‘compound moral person’ of civil sovereignty – thecitizen and the sovereign. In imposing a new ‘civil status’, the state-forming pact institutes new personae and a new way of governingliberty. As such, although it is reached in accordance with the natural lawgoal of security, civil sovereignty is not effectively accountable to naturallaw. For, as a result of the transformative powers of the pact, the sove-reign is the only civil person possessing the capacity to decide the meas-ures needed for social peace.

In discussing each of these features in turn, we shall build up an inter-pretation of Pufendorf ’s natural law that is more in keeping with its his-torical role as both instrument and outcome of the early moderndesacralisation of politics.

.

The first chapter of the first book of Pufendorf ’s De Jure Naturae etGentium executes a short but fundamental expulsion of the Christian–metaphysical concept of the person from the domain of civil ethics andpolitics. Drawing on the Roman-law notion of persona as a duty-bearing status, and the associated Ciceronian notion of ‘office’ (officium)as the duty attached to a civil position, Pufendorf constructs a conceptof civil moral duty in terms of the conduct required by the occupancyof a civil status. Wolfgang Röd has suggested that here Pufendorf mayhave been drawing on the work of one of his teachers, Erhard Weigel(Röd ; Röd ). For Weigel had sketched a (partially) convention-alist account of social order in which moral norms are treated as arte-factual ‘moral entities’ – Weigel also calls them entia civilia or civil entities– instituted by human agreement for the purpose of securing socialorder and cohesion (Weigel , –). In any case, in Pufendorf ’shands this construction was unexpected and unwelcome in manyLutheran theology and philosophy faculties, rejecting as it did theChristian metaphysics of the person root and branch.

Protestant neoscholastic metaphysics had construed the concept ofperson in terms of the Aristotelian ontology of substances and acci-dents. Here person is understood as the substance or ‘supposite’ of anintellectual being (R. Schröder , ). But it is metaphysicalChristology which provides the seminal patterns for later philosophical

From moral personality to civil personae

conceptions of the unity of the person. In this setting, the pressure tounify divided ‘offices’ (divine and human) and ‘states’ (of exaltation andinanition) comes from the imperative of mediation and salvation, whichhelps to explain the extraordinary importance of the ‘two natures oneperson’ formula to all Christological debate during the seventeenthcentury (Baur ; Sparn , –). In fact the conception of moralpersonality in the early modern metaphysics of morals – the linerunning from Leibniz through Wolff to Kant – may be regarded as aseries of elaborations of this soteriological conception of personal unity(Kobusch ). Leibniz’s monadology, for example, may be treated asa ‘secular’ improvisation on the Christological metaphysics of personalunity; for, as a result of the division between their spontaneous apper-ception and their passive sensing, the monads echo the neoscholasticdivision of Christ’s divine and human natures, fuelling the same drivefor unifying mediation (Sparn ). Despite his ongoing attempts toprovide a definitive metaphysics of the Eucharist, Leibniz’s monadologyallowed him to shift the drama of mediation and salvation to the twinnatures of homo duplex, where the pursuit of saving unity could take placeas a philosophical spiritual exercise. Nonetheless, as we have argued,given its Platonic–ascetic form, this philosophical pursuit of personalunity retains a strongly religious character. In any case, rather than antic-ipating the further ‘subjectivisation’ of the metaphysical conception ofthe person – which would occur in Kant’s notion of self-legislative ratio-nal being – Pufendorf ’s construction of civil persona or officium severs hisnatural law from this entire line of development. The opening chapterof the De Jure is the sundering blow.

Launching a corrosive intervention into the neoscholastic Weltans-chauung, Pufendorf denies that the ontology of substances and attributeshas any relevance to the moral domain and the understanding of per-sonhood, thus relegating it to the domain of natural or physical entities.This marks the beginning of a remarkable anti-metaphysical tour de force,in which he sets out to destroy the whole programme of deriving moralduties from a moral nature embedded in the person and acceded tothrough reflection on divine or transcendent reasons. Pufendorf ’scentral weapon is the distinction he draws between physical and moralentities. Physical entities (entia physica) are created, and their propertiesflow from the substances subtending them. Moral entities (entia moralia),however, arise through ‘imposition’ (impositionis), and their properties(moral duties) flow not from an essential moral nature (form, entelechy,

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

soul), but from the purposes for which they have been superadded tophysical beings: ‘We seem able, accordingly, to define moral entities mostconveniently as certain modes, added to physical things or motions, byintelligent beings, primarily to direct and temper the freedom of the vol-untary acts of man, and thereby secure a certain orderliness anddecorum in civilised life’ (DJN, .i., ). Reason and morality thus do notflow from an intelligible substance (‘rational being’) imbricated in theorder of being, but represent capacities for inventing and improvising inrelation to the circumstances and needs of man.

Pursuing his desubstantialisation of morality by a daring analogy,Pufendorf comments that if physical things have their propertiesthrough the manner in which their substances or supposites occupyspace, then moral entities – specifically moral persons (personae morales) –exist through their occupancy of a particular state or status (statu), whichis the ‘space’ in which moral qualities and actions are possible. As themode of bearing a particular configuration of duties, status is eithernatural or adventitious – the former being the status imposed on man byGod, the latter comprising those imposed on man by himself. ButPufendorf is careful to point out that not even the natural status repre-sents an unfolding of an ontological nature or essence, being rather themode God has willed to shape man’s conduct and govern his naturalliberty: ‘Hence the active force which lies in [moral entities] does notconsist in their ability directly to produce any physical change in anything, but only in this, that it is made clear to men along what line theyshould govern their liberty of action, and that in a special way men aremade capable of receiving some good or evil and of directing certainactions towards other persons with a particular effect’ (DJN, .i., ).

Pufendorf thus replaces the metaphysical conception of the person asthe substantial origin of all its offices and conditions with an account ofoffices tied only to an instituted status or condition. This enables him toreject the idea of duties unfolding from a single source of spiritual beingor intellectual reflection in favour of a conception of their multipleorigins in invented statuses. It is quite misleading, therefore, for TheoKobusch to interpret Pufendorf ’s conception of moral entity as if it werea development of the neoscholastic conception of the person as moralsubstance, bearing inalienable rights and duties, and set apart fromnatural being only by its Kantian capacity for free self-determination(Kobusch , –). Far from attempting to provide a moral–ontolog-ical anchor for moral freedom and natural rights, Pufendorf ’s separation

From moral personality to civil personae

of moral from natural being is intended to divorce duties and rights fromall ontological foundations and salvific aspirations, grounding theminstead in imposed offices which originate in a civil rather than a meta-physical order. As Haakonssen explains: ‘Officia in the broader sense arethus not simply “duties”, as the term is normally rendered in English.They are the offices of life which encompass clusters of specific dutiesand rights, and we are bound to them by an obligatio, or moral necessity’(Haakonssen , –).

In explicitly rejecting the neoscholastic and rationalist metaphysics ofnatural law, Pufendorf uses this conception of moral offices in order todisplace the Platonic–Aristotelian conception of ‘universal justice’ –understood as both the plenary form of the virtues and the recovery ofself-governing moral personality. Writing to his young admirer ChristianThomasius on July he comments that: ‘If I can demonstrate thatthey are only suited to a certain kind of republic [i.e., the Greek polis],I regard it as a strong argument among rational people that one shouldnot set up morality in accordance with Aristotle’s eleven virtues. And ingeneral it is my opinion that one should institute and manage moralitynot in accordance with virtues but in accordance with offices [officia].’Reminding us of the rival moral anthropology underpinning this shiftfrom metaphysical virtues to civil offices, Pufendorf continues: ‘In anycase, Epicurean ethics is without doubt better than Aristotelian. But thename of Epicurus is so hated by the idiots that one must fear thatBileam’s horse would mount the pulpit and preach if one said anythinggood of Epicurus’ (GW, , –).

Pufendorf leaves us in little doubt regarding the central objective ofhis relegation of moral personality in favour of civil personae. He seeksto secularise and pluralise the basic ethical tool used in the shaping ofmoral comportments – the figuration of personhood. Cut loose from itsvertical integration in spiritual substance and rational being, and freedfrom its salvific role in the ‘Christology’ of homo duplex, personhood couldbe distributed horizontally across a variety of statuses imposed for theends of civil governance. The reconfiguration of moral personhoodarising from this transformation is so profound, and so counter to theChristian–metaphysical inheritance, that the outrage it provoked inearly modern moral philosophers has only been stilled by the efforts oftheir modern counterparts to re-absorb it into the metaphysics ofmorals. For this reconfiguration allows Pufendorf to separate the philo-sophical concept of the subject – as transcendental rational being – fromthe civil conception of the person, as a comportment imposed for the

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

bearing of obligations. In doing so it allows him to establish an ethicsand politics independent of the moral philosophical treatment of dutiesin terms of self-conscious and self-governing moral personality.

Pufendorf ’s voluntarist anthropology thus precludes the kind of self-relation programmed by Leibniz’s transcendental psychology. It deniesthat individuals can accede to their moral duties through self-unifyingredemptive recovery of their inner imago Dei, rational being or moral per-sonality, insisting instead that they must recognise their duties in thearray of offices or personae imposed on them for the purposes of civilgovernance. By separating the concept of moral person from that ofhuman (rational) being, Pufendorf is able to argue that a single humanbeing may be the bearer of several moral personae – civil and ecclesias-tical, commercial and familial, public and private – each with its ownduties arising from the purposes for which it was instituted (DJN, .i.,–). Further, the obligations clustered around a given status or personaneed have no single unifying principle, arising instead from the variety ofcivil ends terminating in the persona. Conversely, on the same basis,many human beings may be represented by a single moral person, as inthe case of civil associations and states, where individuals subordinatetheir particular wills to the will of the sovereign as a ‘composite moralperson’ (persona moralis composita), again instituted for a certain purpose,here the achievement of social peace and security (DJN, .i., ).

In deriving obligations from multiple principles or ends lying outsidethe individual in the officia of civil life, Pufendorf ’s civil anthropologyplaces the array of duties to which an individual might be subjectbeyond the reach of a single integrating judgment to which they mightaspire. This detranscendentalising and pluralising of moral personhoodholds the key to the separation of civil and religious offices needed forthe governance of newly deconfessionalised states. Pufendorf ’s primepurpose for arguing in this way is to deny that there is any transcendentmoral personality anchored in the nature of man – no moral or rationalbeing, no imago Dei, no Christian conscience – that might permit indi-viduals to unify and rank all their offices from a single point of rationalinsight. Moreover, in Pufendorf ’s central example of the illegitimateunification of offices – the figure of the priest – we catch sight of the his-torical circumstances driving this anti-metaphysical anthropology:

Also we should not forget, that, just as one person may at the same time be indifferent states [pluribus statibus], provided only that the obligations accompany-ing those states do not conflict, so the obligations attached to any one state mayin their parts be derived from different principles. Hence he who gathers the

From moral personality to civil personae

obligations flowing from any one principle, and omits all others, does by nomeans immediately form a state [statum] to which no obligations can or shouldadhere, save those which he himself recollects [meminit]. So he who has gath-ered from the Sacred Scriptures alone the parts of the duty of priests [partes officiisacerdotum], assuredly cannot deny that those priests are also obligated toperform such duties as are required by the constitutions of individual govern-ments [civitatum]. And so we also who are here treating merely of the duties ofman [hominis officia], which can be shown to be necessary by the light of reason,do by no means maintain that any such state of man, which includes such obli-gations alone [i.e., those ‘recollected’ from a single principle or source], ever didexist, can exist, or should exist. (DJN, .i., –)

The duties attaching to a moral persona may arise from a plurality ofprinciples, and it is unacceptable for anyone – priests in the first instance– to unify their duties using the method of inner self-reflection, as if theobligations they were under had no external civil determinants. Thoseneoscholastic theologians and rationalist philosophers who sought tosubordinate civil duties to the cultivation of a transcendent moral per-sonality stood in the way of the pluralisation of offices required by lifein deconfessionalised states. In confessional society the inward cultiva-tion of spiritual unity had its external correlate in the efforts of religiousintellectuals to subordinate all the spheres and duties of life to the relig-ious or transcendental–moral. This moral unification of life had fuelledthe unbridled intensity of the conflicts between the different confessionalcommunities. The separation of religious and civil governance at thelevel of the state was thus conditional on the secularisation and plural-isation of personhood at the level of the individual.

Rather than representing a stage in the development of (Kantian)moral philosophy, Pufendorf ’s anti-metaphysical anthropology shouldthus be seen as directly engaging with specific religious and politicalcircumstances. Through his frontal assault on the paideia of metaphysi-cal anthropology – through his rejection of self-formation via the innerascent to quasi-divine concepts of morality and justice – Pufendorf waslaying the groundwork for the separation of religious and civil govern-ance that lies at the heart of his natural law. It should already be clearthat if the confessional theologian was the first target of this attack thenthe metaphysical philosopher would be the next. For, no less than thereligious, the metaphysical sage is prone to determining his obligationsfor himself, imagining that the duties of the philosopher have a singletranscendent source – in the conceptual contemplation of pure ideas –to the exclusion or assimilation of the duties imposed by historicallyexisting governments.

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.

Like Leibniz’s, Pufendorf ’s method of constructing or ‘knowing’ naturallaw is deeply embedded in his moral anthropology. Pufendorf ’s concep-tion of man as the bearer of imposed statuses or offices, however, is asso-ciated with an intellectual method differing profoundly from Leibniz’sexercise in transcendental rationalism. Drawing in part on the doctrineof fallen man’s incapacity for transcendent knowledge, but more cen-trally on his doctrine of the imposed nature of moral entities, Pufendorfinsists that the science of natural law may not be derived from insightinto theo-rational concepts or norms existing prior to the imposition oflaws.

Pufendorf ’s voluntarist insistence that ‘scientific’ knowledge of moral-ity is possible without positing objective values – things considered goodor bad ‘in themselves’ without reference to the laws making them so – isnot simply an epistemological doctrine. In fact it is central to his strat-egy for the civil ‘rescaling’ of natural law, providing the means of includ-ing it in the same (‘imposed’) domain as the civil state’s positive law:

Now in order that this knowledge of natural law with which we are now con-cerned, and which includes all moral and civil knowledge that is genuine andsolid [& quae genuinam ac solidam doctrinam moralem & civilem absolvit], may meetthe full requirements of a science, we feel that we need not declare, with certainwriters, that some things are noble or base of themselves without any imposi-tion, and that these form the object of natural and perpetual law, while those,the good repute or baseness of which depends upon the will of a legislator, fallunder the head of positive laws. (DJN, .ii., )

It is possible to have certain knowledge in the moral sciences, Pufendorfargues, but such certainty is internal to the domain of knowledge createdby the a-rational imposition of laws: ‘For since good repute [honestas], ormoral necessity, and turpitude, are affections [qualities] of humanactions arising from their conformity or non-conformity to some normor law, and law is the bidding of a superior, it does not appear that goodrepute or turpitude can be conceived to exist before the law, and withoutthe imposition of a superior’ (DJN, .ii., ). To suggest that the moralquality of actions exists independently of God’s gratuitous imposition isto ‘join to God some co-eternal extrinsic principle which He Himselfhad to follow in the assignment of the forms of things’; and this is impos-sible because ‘God created all things, man included, of His free will’ andcould have assigned ‘whatever nature He wished to this creature whom

Transcendent reflection to chastened observation

he was about to create’. Pufendorf accepts that there is such a thing asnatural good, which consists in the naturally beneficial powers containedin man’s physical nature, and, indeed, all moral goods are based innatural goods. The converse is not true however – that is, not all naturalgoods are moral goods – because natural goods cross the threshold ofmorality only via the imposition of some law aimed at governing man’snatural liberty. Natural actions, including the acts constituting adultery,theft, and murder, are thus morally indifferent as physical actions, andacquire moral qualities only through the imposition of law (DJN, .ii.,–).

The key to Pufendorf ’s detranscendentalising of moral and politicalphilosophy, therefore, lies in his voluntaristic rejection of transcen-dent–objective moral norms. This does not mean, however, that his vol-untarism constitutes a rival theory of moral truth to the rationalist onechampioned by Leibniz and the Lutheran neoscholastics. For the effectof Pufendorf ’s theological voluntarism is not to launch a (possibly) truetheory of man’s moral nature; rather it is to transform the manner inwhich philosophers will accede to truth in this domain. If it is acceptedthat man’s moral nature is a status imposed on him by God – and is nota form of rational being shared with God’s – then man must come toknowledge of the moral laws from within the confines of thisungrounded ‘historical’ nature. Man must accept that the flawed andvicious nature he possesses as a matter of fact is the only one relevant fordeducing of natural laws of morality, which must be laws governing acreature with just this kind of nature. In other words, man must come toknowledge of his ethical duties from within the confines of the natureimposed to fit him for society with other men, rather than adopting theviewpoint of a being privy to the reason or goodness out of which Godimposed this nature. Pufendorf ’s voluntarism thus forms part of anethical exercise designed to impel natural jurists to detranscendentalisetheir discipline by turning from the contemplation of the transcendent‘perfections’ shared with God to the observation of the historical flawsimmanent to humanity.

This is the intellectual-historical light in which we must viewPufendorf ’s ‘deduction’ of the natural law in the third chapter of Book of the De Jure. This deduction is immediately preceded by Pufendorf ’sversion of man in his ‘natural condition’ (statu hominum naturali).Pufendorf presents his account of man in the state of nature as exem-plifying the empirical standpoint needed to derive the natural law fromchastened observation of the moral nature man actually has. In this

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regard his version is specifically opposed to the neoscholastic depictionsof the natural condition, which, in equating it with the Christian state ofinnocence (status integritatis), orient natural law to the religious command-ments governing man in his fallen condition. In relying on revelation,Pufendorf argues, this account belongs in the domain of moral theologyand has no place in the ‘civil science’ of natural law (DSH, §§–,–). Pufendorf thus refuses to construe the natural condition interms of the Christian conception of a state of innocence, defining itinstead through opposition to the civil state, as ‘that condition for whichman is understood to be constituted, by the mere fact of his birth, allinventions and institutions, either of man or suggested to him fromabove, being disregarded’ (DJN, .ii., ).

The content of Pufendorf ’s version of the state of nature does not, ofcourse, arise from observation in the sense of the modern empiricalnatural sciences. In fact it derives from Epicurean and Stoic sourcescompiled in the classic humanist manner; for Pufendorf ’s approach isobservational or empirical in an ethical rather than an epistemologicalsense, dedicated to confining natural law to knowledge of a nature inneed of political rule rather than one capable of governing itselfthrough reason. In the summary version of the De Officio, Pufendorf thuscharacterises natural man as a creature whose weakness (imbecilitas)necessitates sociality for survival but whose ‘vices render dealing withhim risky and make great caution necessary to avoid receiving evil fromhim instead of good’. Unlike the beasts, man’s appetites for sex and foodare limitless and impossible to satisfy. Moreover: ‘Many other passionsand desires are found in the human race unknown to the beasts, as, greedfor unnecessary possessions, avarice, desire of glory and surpassingothers, envy, rivalry and intellectual strife. It is indicative that many ofthe wars by which the human race is broken and bruised are waged forreasons unknown to the beasts’ (DOH, .iii., ). Man’s petulance, hiscapacity for giving and receiving offence, combined with his extraordi-nary capacity for violence, makes his natural condition a very dangerousone, particularly when one takes into account the great divisions inhuman beliefs and ways of life. In short: ‘Man, then, is an animal withan intense concern for his own preservation, needy by himself, incapableof protection without the help of his fellows, and very well fitted for themutual provision of benefits. Equally, however, he is at the same timemalicious, aggressive, easily provoked and as willing as he is able to inflictharm on others’ (DOH, .iii., ).

Man’s life in the state of nature would thus indeed be miserable,

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unadorned, and short. It would not, however, be ungoverned by naturallaw or bereft of friendship as a primitive form of sociality. This isbecause man is indeed equipped by nature to know the natural law, evenif he is not equipped to govern himself in accordance with it. In provid-ing the state of nature with this kind of disposition, Pufendorf is distin-guishing his version of it from two others. First, he uses it to criticiseHobbes’ naturalistic description of the state of nature as one of ungov-erned war, and Spinoza’s parallel metaphysical account of the naturalstate as one of radically conflicting individual rights arising from uncon-trolled natural desire. Against these Pufendorf argues that even in thestate of nature humans possess a reason and will informed by naturallaw. This gives rise to minimal obligations and rights – to preserve oneselfand not to harm others – which means that the natural state inclines topeace, even though it is perpetually threatened by war through man’sincapacity to adhere to these obligations in the absence of a superior(DJN, .ii., –).

Second, Pufendorf ’s prime opponents, however, are the neoscholasticnatural jurists. By invoking the state of innocence as a bulwark againstHobbes’ war of all against all, these metaphysicians claimed that manwas capable of governing himself through right reason, which meansthat government (sovereignty) itself is a feature of man’s natural condi-tion. Clearly Pufendorf ’s view of man’s incapacity for self-governance isfundamentally opposed to this argument, but here he concentrates on itsunacceptable political consequences. To accept right reason as a princi-ple of government in the state of nature would be to infringe thesupreme authority of the government that emerges with the transitionto the civil state; for right reason would then be ‘something superior evento what is supreme’. As such it would undermine the sovereignty of civilgovernment, which consists in its capacity to rule over men ‘free fromany interference on their part’ (DJN, .ii., ). In short, both Hobbesand his neoscholastic opponents fail to see that despite being natural incontradistinction to civil, man’s condition in the state of nature remainsan imposed status – a mode of bearing duties instituted for the govern-ance of his liberty. This means that the natural state is neither lawlessnor of itself capable of giving rise to civil sovereignty, which arises fromthe imposition of a new kind of status or condition on man. We willreturn to this last point in the following section.

Pufendorf ’s deduction of the natural law is thus meant to exemplifyhow man as the bearer of an imposed moral nature can derive itslaws from the ‘inside’, through observation of what it takes to preserve

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

a creature of the kind man happens to be. It comes as no surprise there-fore that Pufendorf prefaces his deduction by remarking that the law ofnature can be obtained through straightforward observation of man andthe requirements of his nature:

There seems to us no more fitting and direct way to learn the law of nature thanthrough careful consideration of the nature, condition and desires of manhimself, although in such a consideration other things should necessarily beobserved which lie outside man himself, and especially such things as work forhis advantage or disadvantage. For whether the law was laid upon man in orderto increase his happiness or to restrain his evil disposition, which may be his owndestruction, it will be learned in no easier way than by observing when manneeds assistance and when he needs restraint. (DJN, .iii., )

On the basis of the Epicurean anthropology that supplies the content ofthis observation, Pufendorf proceeds to derive the general form ofnatural law in this way:

After the preceding remarks it is easy to find the basis of natural law. It is quiteclear that man is an animal extremely desirous of his own preservation, inhimself exposed to want, unable to exist without the help of his fellow creatures,fitted in a remarkable way to contribute to the common good, and yet at alltimes malicious, petulant, and easily irritated, as well as quick and powerful todo injury. For such an animal to live and enjoy the good things that in this worldattend his condition, it is necessary that he be sociable, that is, be willing to joinhimself with others like him, and conduct himself towards them in such a waythat, far from having any cause to do him harm, they may feel that there isreason to preserve and increase his good fortune . . . And so it is a fundamentallaw of nature, that ‘Every man, so far as in him lies, should cultivate and pre-serve toward others a sociable attitude, which is peaceful and agreeable at alltimes to the nature and end of the human race’. (DJN, .iii., –)

Pufendorf ’s deduction of natural law thus serves two interrelatedfunctions. First, in deriving the law from an ‘empirical’ nature that Godhas gratuitously imposed on man, rather than from a rational nature thatman shares with the divine being, this deduction sloughs off all thetranscendental aspirations of ethics, leaving only the duty of cultivatinga peaceable deportment in the interests of civil peace. Second, by deriv-ing the law from ‘observation’ of man’s ‘empirical’ condition, ratherthan through philosophical abstraction to his higher rational being, thededuction seeks to remodel the intellectual deportment – the mode ofconducting the intellect – through which civil duties are recognised. Itdrops exalted philosophical self-reflection as the appropriate mode ofacceding to civil duties, replacing it with chastened recognition of theobligations imposed in the interests of sociability. Given their centrality

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to Pufendorf ’s detranscendentalising of ethics and politics, each of thesefunctions requires further clarification.

In rejecting the idea that natural law flows from a rational nature thatman shares with God, and treating it instead as a rule for governingan ‘empirical’ nature gratuitously and inscrutably imposed on him,Pufendorf launches a frontal assault on the central doctrines of neoscho-lastic natural law. To this end he divides those writers ‘who search for theprototype of natural law in God himself ’ into two classes:

The one finds its prime origin in the divine will, and since this is in the highestsense free, they conclude that the law of nature can be changed by God, nay, itsvery opposite can be enjoined, just as is the case with positive laws. The othermaintains that it is based on the essential holiness and justice of God, so thatthe law of nature expresses these attributes like a kind of ektypvma (copy)[ectype]; and from this proceeds also the immutability of natural law, becausethe justice and holiness of God reject all alteration and change. (DJN, .iii.,)

The first position – unrestrained theological voluntarism – is flawed,Pufendorf argues, because it fails to understand that while God is free tocreate beings with any nature he pleases, once God has created a beingwith man’s nature, he is not free to change the laws whose observancepreserves this being. God thus refrains from altering natural law not – asthe rationalists argue – because it binds the divine will to an unchange-able metaphysical order, but because natural law is the means of main-taining the being produced by God’s act of free creation (DJN, .iii.,). But it is the second – ‘theo-rationalist’ – position that Pufendorf isat greatest pains to attack; for, in regarding human nature and its law ascontinuous with divine nature and its law, this view is inimical toPufendorf ’s treatment of natural law in terms of norms immanent toman’s worldly empirical nature. Pufendorf deploys two related argu-ments against this view. First he attacks it for vainly and impiously claim-ing to judge divine justice and holiness by human standards. Then heargues that it wrongly presumes a continuity between the legal obliga-tions established among men and the willed imposition establishingthese obligations, which is a free creative act knowing no obligations(DJN, .iii., ).

It is only apparently paradoxical that Pufendorf ’s own theological vol-untarism issues in a fundamental de-theologisation of natural law. Forthe result of viewing man’s moral nature as gratuitously imposed by Godis that one cannot inquire into the theo-rational grounds of the moral

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

laws governing this nature. Such laws must therefore be treated as whollyimmanent to the ‘observable’ or ‘empirical’ moral nature accessible to abeing lacking all transcendental–rational insight; rather than as ‘eternaltruths’ or ‘moral necessities’ common to human and divine reason andpermitting man’s participation in the latter. Conversely, we have alreadyobserved that in grounding natural law in transcendent reasons commonto man and God, metaphysical rationalism is responsible for a profoundtheologisation of natural law; for in doing so it invokes a model of ratio-nal being – as the intellection of the intelligibles prior to their devolutioninto the world of the senses and their utilities – whose prototype is thedivine mind and whose beneficiary is the metaphysical clerisy.

Pufendorf ’s attack on the central emblems of neoscholastic andrationalist legal metaphysics – the figures of the status integritatis and theimago Dei – is thus integral to his voluntarist detranscendentalising ofethics. Pufendorf rejects utterly the doctrine that man can or may accedeto his natural law duties by burnishing the image of divine justice andholiness in his own person. The reason is clear: human justice and good-ness arise from acting in accordance with imposed laws but, as theuntrammelled source of this imposition, God’s will is just and holy in aquite different and incommensurate way (DJN, .iii., –). Hence,while God has created man to be just, human justice is not continuouswith divine; and, while man is destined for society with God in anotherworld, divine society cannot be the model for the societies of this world.

The anti-scholastic intent of Pufendorf ’s theologically derived volun-tarism is made clear in some off-the-record remarks that he addressed toThomasius in a letter written in April . These remarks arise in thecontext of Pufendorf ’s response to his young admirer’s plans for his ownnatural law work – the Institutiones Jurisprudentiae Divinae that wouldappear in . Here, it will be recalled, Thomasius was in part defend-ing Pufendorf ’s natural law against Valentin Alberti’s neoscholasticattack, which makes it all the more significant that Pufendorf shouldcongratulate his young follower for scrutinising the doctrine of the statusintegritatis:

Among other things, my esteemed sir, it pleases me greatly that the same [work,i.e., the Institutiones] explains the theory of the incorrupt state [status integri].Because if this [theory] is distinctly outlined in accordance with the hypothesisof our theologians, human life receives such a different shape from that oftoday, that our natural laws would make no sense for it. And because most partsof our law distinguish the two human institutes, absolute sovereignty and

Transcendent reflection to chastened observation

human government [nempe dominum et imperium humanum], whether and how farthey would have obtained in the state of incorruption is very hard to determine. . . My esteemed sir otherwise does well if he avoids all conflict with the theo-logians and its accompanying retaliation, and maintains merely that holy Velten[Valentin Alberti] errs beyond doubt, and wishes to introduce a mixture that isagainst all reason. (GW, , )

In rendering natural law immanent to man’s worldly empirical nature– in excluding all recourse to his divine imaginal nature – Pufendorf thusaims to restrict moral and political philosophy to the horizon of conductrequired for the maintenance of civil peace. If natural law reaches nofurther than the preservation of man’s sociability, and if moral respon-sibility reaches no further than the external performance of actsrequired by law, then moral and political philosophy must be restrictedto public actions imputed as good or bad, just or unjust in accordancewith the rules of social peace. In this way Pufendorf disconnects hisversion of natural law from all concern with a justice higher than themaintenance of external social security; and, as we have seen, heremoves his natural law sociality from all concern with a goodness higherthan that attaching to external action in accordance with the law. Inshort, Pufendorf disconnects civil ethics from the pursuit of holiness,whether in the explicitly theological form of the neoscholastic pursuit ofthe imago Dei, or in the implicitly theo-rational forms of Leibniz’s meta-physical ascent to the ‘pure’ concept of justice.

It is, however, the second aspect of Pufendorf ’s detranscendentalisingof morality – his refusal to accept that natural law is acceded to via prin-ciples of reason and goodness common to God and man – that was mostdestructive of seventeenth-century academic moral philosophy, andremains so in relation to today’s versions. For, by insisting that moralnorms be derived from and for an impaired worldly nature lacking alltransparency to transcendent reason, Pufendorf is attempting to restrictthe forms of philosophical reasoning themselves to the horizon of civilpeace.

Not even the comparatively benign theo-rational conception ofnatural law offered by Lambert Velthuysen escapes Pufendorf ’s stric-tures in this regard. Pufendorf seizes on Velthuysen’s comment that:‘The supreme right of God over His creatures is made known to thenatural reason by those principles which form among men the founda-tion of natural law and equity.’ Such a view is untenable, Pufendorfargues, because it confuses the absolute right exercised by God in impos-ing man’s moral nature with the ‘hypothetical’ (immanent, relative)

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

rights and obligations arising among men as a result of this imposition.For Pufendorf, this confusion arises from the assumption that God’sactions are subject to the same laws as man’s. Velthuysen had argued that‘God should of necessity consider natural laws to be just, the order ofthis universe being established and constituted as it now appears to theeyes of every man.’ He had supported this by commenting: ‘Because allthings which we can picture in our minds always have a sxesin or rela-tion, arising from the intrinsic nature of the thing, which cannot bysound judgment be separated from the thing.’ In criticising this attemptto show the transcendent rationality of natural law, Pufendorf com-ments that God himself is not subject to the moral necessity of naturallaw since ‘with Him there can be discovered no necessity other than thatwhich he derives from the divine pleasure’. Further, there is no intrinsicmoral relation or quality attaching to things, and thereby giving mannatural knowledge of divine law, ‘since things do not have such a natureand accompanying relation of themselves, but only at the will of theCreator, and the decision of His will cannot properly be called a law’.He thus concludes:

Thus the reason why, among men, a favour obligates one to gratitude, and whya violation of agreements, savagery, pride, and contumely can never be lawful,is because God has appointed for man a sociable nature, and so long as this isuntainted, what is agreeable to it is reputable [honesta], and what does not agreewith it is unlawful and base. But this does not imply any right common to Godand men, or any endowment or sxesin [relation] of things which is not basedupon the divine will. (DJN, .iii., )

The depth and scale of Pufendorf ’s programme for detranscenden-talising moral philosophy now becomes clear. It is not just neoscholasticmoral theologians who fall beneath the wheels of Pufendorf ’s jugger-naut but, by implication, the entirety of rationalist moral and politicalmetaphysics – to the extent, that is, that it continued to derive naturallaw duties through reflection on principles of reason and goodnesscommon to God and man or man and the cosmos. For Pufendorf ’scentral argument is that man has to accede to his natural law duties viaa contingent nature that offers him no continuity with or insight into therational and moral nature of its creator.

The depth of Pufendorf ’s voluntarism – his insistence that the cer-tainty of man’s moral knowledge occurs inside the moral and epistemo-logical universe created by arbitrarily imposed laws – holds the key to hiscriticism and transformation of Grotius’ construction of natural law.Despite Grotius’ insistence on the normative pre-eminence of sociability,

Transcendent reflection to chastened observation

his famous rationalist formula in the Prolegomena to De jure belli ac pacis –that natural law would be valid even were God not to exist – is, as Tierneyargues, a direct echo of the neoscholastic natural law (Tierney ,–). It is precisely at this point that Pufendorf parts company with hishonoured predecessor. Grotius goes astray, Pufendorf argues, when heclaims that we can test the goodness of natural laws themselves by seeingwhether the actions they prescribe agree with ‘sound reason’ or man’s‘rational and social nature’. This cannot be done, firstly, because soundreason in moral affairs always assumes the existence of such laws and, sec-ondly, because man’s moral nature is no less the result of gratuitous impo-sition than the laws it is supposed to justify. There is, therefore, no way ofascribing an absolute goodness to legislated actions by discerning theiragreement with a nature that is ‘good in itself ’ or carries the seeds of itsown perfection in the Aristotelian manner. Rather, the goodness of suchactions is only ‘hypothetical’ – that is, good relative to a nature whose owngoodness is a function of its imposition for the governance of conduct(DJN, .ii., ). Despite first appearances, then, the fact that Grotius isprepared to entertain the conjectural independence of natural law fromdivine command is a sign of his residual attachment to the transcenden-tal–rationalist line. Conversely, by treating natural law as the gratuitousexpression of the divine will, Pufendorf is actually breaking with this line.For in doing so he renders natural law immanent to moral offices thatbetray no trace of the higher rational nature that has imposed them,thereby treating man’s moral nature as an empirical phenomenon to bemanaged in accordance with the pragmatic rules required for its sheerpreservation. The appeal to divine will as the inscrutable source of moralnature is Pufendorf ’s way of removing the transcendent–rationaljustifications from morality and natural law.

Pufendorf ’s deduction of natural law from man’s need for sociabilitydoes not, therefore, operate in the standard ‘teleological’ manner. It isnot an attempt to justify moral norms by showing that they are neces-sary to realise or perfect a natural good. In observing his need for social-ity man is only observing his moral end from within the limits of hisworldly nature. In recognising that he must conform to the laws of soci-ability required for his worldly flourishing, man is not deducing theirnecessity from a good known independently of them. Rather he isobserving their utility for a nature that we take to be good because itforms the moral horizon for our ethical judgments. ‘Right reason’ is thusnot a procedure for deriving the law from a rational or moral end knownindependently of the law, but an attempt to conduct the intellect along

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the moral path formed by a gratuitously imposed nature and law:‘Therefore the law of nature may be called the dictate of right reasononly in the sense that the mind of man has the faculty of being ableclearly to understand, from the observation of his condition, that hemust of necessity order his life by that law, and at the same time to searchout the principle whereby its commands can be convincingly and clearlydemonstrated’ (DJN, .., ). The question of why man findshimself in his needy–vicious condition – the question of what liesbeyond the ethical horizon formed by the laws of man’s worldlyflourishing – is not open to reason.

So profound is this rejection of rational justifications for natural lawthat it even applies to the principle of utility. Pufendorf indeed advancesthe utility of natural laws as the condition of our knowing them, yet hedenies that this constitutes a rational justification for them. The relevantremark runs: ‘But, although by the wisdom of the Creator the naturallaw has been so adapted to the nature of man, that its observance isalways connected with the profit and the advantage of men, and there-fore also this general love tends to man’s greatest good, yet, in giving areason for this fact, one does not refer to the advantage accruing there-from, but to the common nature of all men’ (DJN, .iii., –). Neo-Aristotelian and neo-Kantian commentators cite this passage asevidence that Pufendorf (partially) refused the utilitarian conception ofnatural law in favour of one investing it in a nature ‘good in itself ’(Denzer , ; Schneewind , ). But this represents a miscon-strual of the passage’s intent. Pufendorf refuses utility as a rationaljustification for natural law not because he accepts the notion of an abso-lutely (teleological or deontological) good nature, but because he deniesthat human beings are capable of providing any kind of (transcendent)rational justification for natural law, including a utilitarian one.

We have already seen Pufendorf taking Grotius to task for purportingto justify natural law by testing it against man’s moral nature. Such a pro-cedure is impossible not because this nature or its imposition is ‘good initself ’, but because it has been arbitrarily imposed on us by a superior.The imposed character of man’s moral nature means that while he candeduce natural law by observing what it takes to preserve his nature, hecannot offer a rational or moral justification for the law through rationalinsight into the goodness of this nature; for, as we have seen, man’s senseof goodness arises from the arbitrary imposition of this nature and istherefore internal to it. The goodness of natural law, and the advantageman derives from it, meet not in a reason he shares with God but in the

Transcendent reflection to chastened observation

nature imposed on him at God’s pleasure. It is not belief in God thatholds goodness and utility together, though. Rather, it is recognising that,as a result of moral reason’s immanence to a gratuitously imposed moralnature, man has no choice but to call ‘good’ that which allows a creaturewith this kind of nature to survive and flourish. Man can deduce thenatural law by observing its utility for attaining the sociality required forhis preservation. He cannot know, however, that the preservation of hisnature is a good intended by God. For God’s acts are not bound by(human) ends and man’s sense of the good is internal to the nature arbi-trarily imposed on him, although natural religion dictates that he shouldtreat this imposition as sign of God’s providence. Man must thereforederive his own understanding of natural law by observing its utility forhis sociable nature. At the same time he must eschew all attempts to treatthis derivation as revealing the reason for God’s imposition of thisnature, which must be treated as gratuitous and inscrutable.

The difficulty that moral philosophers – modern and early modern –have in coming to terms with Pufendorf ’s deduction of natural law isthat they treat it as another attempt to provide a philosophicaljustification for ethics. It is, however, something almost diametricallyopposed to this interpretation: namely, an attempt to show that ethicalduties can and must be acceded to independently of philosophicaljustifications. Moral philosophy purports to accede to natural law dutiesthrough purifying reflection on a nature that connects man to a higherrational and moral being – to the perfect ends man shares with God, tothe order of things that harmonises him with the cosmos, to the holymoral law of his own intellect. For Pufendorf, however, man must accedeto such duties through sobering recognition of a nature that requiresmutual assistance but threatens mutual destruction. Only thus can heavoid the self-exalting delusion that his duties arise from the dignity ofhis rational and social being, accepting instead that they come from therequirements of preserving his civil nature through restrained sociabil-ity with other men. In short, the persona of the (metaphysical) moralphilosopher is an inappropriate model for the deportment of the decon-fessionalised citizen.

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Pufendorf ’s reconstruction of the scope of natural law duties and of themode of acceding to them has profound consequences for his concep-tion of political authority or the state. We have seen that by treating

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man’s natural state as an imposed status Pufendorf construes the law ofsociality as a purely this-worldly rule of security, disconnected from allhigher rational and moral law. In doing so, he clears the way to treat thecivil state not as the expression of man’s rational and moral being but asthe result of a new willed imposition, the sovereignty pact. In agreeingto impose the status of civil sovereignty on themselves, men do not con-struct the political state in accordance with a rational and moral naturethey share with God or reason. They were doing so on the basis of a dan-gerous and contingent nature that can be reshaped through sovereigntyin pursuit of security. As we shall see, the ‘absolute’ character ofPufendorf ’s conception of political authority – his insistence that asupreme or sovereign power must be exercised independently of themoral judgments of those over whom it is exercised – is not well under-stood by modern commentators, particularly those whose calling asmoral philosophers commits them to the primacy of individual moraljudgment. But then neither do these commentators understand themanner in which Pufendorf ’s absolutism harbours a ‘liberal’ conceptionof religious toleration.

Pufendorf construes the political state as a human artifice imposed bymen on themselves as an instrument of this-worldly security. This con-struction fits well with our account of the larger historical task that he hadundertaken: the fashioning of a civil philosophy capable of comprehend-ing the desacralisation of the state that had already occurred at the levelof law and politics. Pufendorf ’s undertaking was fundamental as itinvolved overturning the way in which existing natural law doctrine –neoscholastic and rationalist – organised the relations between the indi-vidual’s religious, ethical, and political obligations. His strategy is toreshape these relations around the figure of a fundamental agreement orpact whose form and outcome accord with natural law without beingrationally or morally prefigured by it. At the heart of Pufendorf ’s accountof the civil state or status lies his conception of the political pact as thewilled imposition of a moral entity, civil sovereignty. This pact is analo-gous to God’s gratuitous imposition of man’s natural state or status and,like it, provides a means of governing man’s natural liberty through theimposition of new moral persona on him. In fact it is the imposed char-acter of the civil state that holds the key to its secularised – desacralisedand detranscendentalised – form. In creating civil sovereignty as a new‘compound’ moral entity, consisting of the citizen (subject) and the sove-reign (ruler), the compacting individuals are in fact transforming the basison which they exercise their liberty and accede to their obligations.

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Centrally, in agreeing to enter the civil state in accordance with naturallaw, individuals give up their capacity to decide whether henceforth thestate is being governed in accordance with natural law. For Pufendorf, thisholds the key to uncoupling civil from religious governance, the rule ofthe sovereign from the rule of conscience.

Pufendorf ’s reconstruction of civil sovereignty is focused in Book of the De Jure Naturae et Gentium. He begins in his usual manner, by clear-ing away the alternative accounts of the state offered by Hobbes and byanti-Hobbesian neoscholastic political theology – here represented by J.F. Horn’s De Civitate. In claiming that in the state of nature ‘natural lawsare silent’, Hobbes argues that the state arises not from the need forsociality but from the pursuit of individual advantage and the strugglefor supreme power, which goes to the strongest individual. This meansthat individuals must give up their natural rights on entering the civilstate, which gives political right immunity against the destabilisingappeal to natural rights. According to Hobbes’ Protestant–Aristotelianopponents, however, natural law itself gives rise to the state. As the lawof a rational and sociable being whose capacities can only be perfectedin the state – the zoon politicon – neoscholastic natural law assumes a‘natural’ teleological development of the civil from the natural state,thereby grounding political right in natural rights.

Against Hobbes, Pufendorf reactivates the arguments of the secondchapter of Book . These, it will be recalled, are designed to show thathumans are indeed aware of the natural law in the state of nature andattempt to conform their conduct to it, even if only a few succeed indoing so. Sovereignty should thus not be regarded as a prize going to themost powerful in the universal war (DJN, .i., –). Once again,though, it is Hobbes’ neoscholastic opponents who are Pufendorf ’s realtarget. He is particularly concerned to combat Horn’s version of theAristotelian doctrine that the state arises from man’s rational and socialnature, at the behest of natural law, as the means of perfecting thisnature. Against this doctrine Pufendorf argues that while man is indeedcommanded to sociability by the law of his nature, his fractured mindand fractious passions mean that he is not naturally adapted to thepublic-spirited and peaceable role of the citizen: ‘Nay, rather, no animalis more fierce and uncontrolled than man, more prone to vices which arecalculated to disturb the peace of society’ (DJN, .i., ). A furtherreason ‘why the mere law of nature cannot encompass the peace ofmankind’ is that man’s natural liberty is such that his judgments cannotbe made to agree through the exercise of individual reason. Deliberation

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on man’s nature and its ‘permanent advantage’ may indeed point to theneed for civil sovereignty. Few, however, are capable of such deliberation– the pursuit of personal gain giving rise to a chaos of judgments regard-ing man’s true good – which means that human reason is not the sourceof the agreement that leads to the state: ‘But since reason alone, as it isfound in individual men, is unable to compose such great differences,some sort of agreement of opinions must be sought by a different course’(DJN, .i., ). What this course is will soon become apparent.

While man’s natural condition gives rise to the desire for sociality –and in fact to such lower forms of society as the family and the clan – itdoes not of itself give rise to the civil state, as for this a certain comport-ment is required, consisting in ‘trust and pacts’. The source of therestrained comportment attending political society is, however, notreadily understood by those living within it. In a striking observation,animated perhaps by his sense of how quickly the horrors of the ThirtyYears War were being forgotten, Pufendorf comments of states: ‘Theirforce is not realised by children or the unlearned, or their advantages bythose who have never experienced the losses consequent upon their non-existence. This the reason why the former, because they do not under-stand the nature of a civil society, cannot enter into it, while the latter,because ignorant of its advantages, give no heed to it, or at least live init in such a way as not to value its excellence.’ In fact the latter groupthemselves remain political children, and their insouciance regardingthe conditions of their pacified existence suggests what it is that compen-sates for the immaturity of their natures: ‘Therefore, all men, being bornas infants, are by that fact unsuited to civil society, and most of themremain so all their lifetime, while it is discipline, not nature, that fits aman for such a society’ (DJN, .i., ).

This indicates the course by which men will reach the agreement thatgives rise to civil society or the state. If it is discipline and not nature thatgives rise to the peaceable and public-spirited deportment of the citizen,then Aristotelian political theologians such as Horn are wrong to claimthat the state is the realisation of man’s rational and sociable being. It isnot only early modern Aristotelians, however, who will fall victim toPufendorf ’s interposition of discipline as the condition of political sub-jecthood. In attempting to interpret Pufendorf ’s own conception of thisstate as the instrument of man’s moral realisation, modern moral phi-losophers suffer collateral damage. In this regard we can recall Denzer’sargument that in Pufendorf the ‘concept of nature must be taken in itsteleological sense . . . that man strives for perfection’ so that: ‘The natural

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character of the state is thus the final consequence of human nature’scapacity for cultivation’ (Denzer , ). We can also take note ofSimone Zurbuchen’s similar claim that for Pufendorf: ‘As the mostperfect human community . . . the state is natural in the sense that itbelongs to the completion of humanity’ (Zurbuchen , ). In fact,this is precisely the teleological account that Pufendorf is at pains toreject, commenting in his essay De Statu Hominum Naturali (On the NaturalState of Men) of that such a view ‘presupposes a kind of civil statewherein citizens are without any fault and wickedness, when in fact statesare a sort of remedy for human imperfection’ (DSH, § , ).

The imperfection for which states are a remedy is not the immaturityof an essential endowment or teleological ‘nature’, but an incapacitythat shows up in relation to an imposed purpose. Man, says Pufendorf,can be brought to the status of the citizen in the same way that a horsecan be taught to prance, a parrot to talk, a field to bear crops and a hill-side vines – that is, not through the teleological realisation of a naturalcapacity that is good in itself, but through the disciplined transformationof natural capacities in accordance with an imposed end (DJN, .i.,–): ‘Yet no one is so ignorant as not to recognise how ill-adapted arethe characters of most men to this end [of peaceable public-spirited cit-izenship]. To few is it given to meet all the requirements of a goodcitizen; most men are restrained by the fear of punishment, and remaintheir life long poor citizens and non-political creatures’ (DJN, .i.,).

For Pufendorf, then, man is not a political animal in the Aristoteliansense of requiring the state to perfect his rational and social being.Rather, he is so in the starker and more restricted sense of having anature capable of being disciplined to the end served by the formationof states – security:

It is sufficiently clear from all this in what sense then man can be called a polit-ical animal: Not because there resides in each and every one a natural aptitudeto act the part of a good citizen, but because at least a part of mankind can bynature be fitted to that end, and because the safety and preservation ofmankind, now become so multiplied, can be secured only by civil societies. Intothese, nature always intent upon its own preservation, impels men to enter, justas also it is the first fruit of civil society, that in it men may accustom themselvesto lead an orderly life. (DJN, .i., )

It is not through the cultivation of man’s rational and moral naturetherefore that nature composes individual wills to that agreement bywhich they enter civil society, but through a quite different kind of instru-ment – the discipline of mutual fear: ‘Therefore, the real and principal

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reason why the fathers of families left their natural liberty and under-took to establish states, was in order that they could surround themselveswith defences against the evils which threaten man from his fellow man. . . [A]gainst those ills with which man in his baseness delights tothreaten his own kind, the most efficient cure had to be sought from manhimself, by joining men into states and establishing sovereignty’ (DJN,.i., ).

We are now better placed to understand Pufendorf ’s account of thepacts through which men leave the state of nature and enter the civilstate. These consist not in a rational agreement and exchange of rightsand obligations between two natural individuals – the people and thesovereign – but in a series of fear-driven decisions that results in the crea-tion and imposition of a new status or moral person. For a state to bepossible there must be a body of men large enough to defend itselfagainst other groups, and these men must be able to agree on the bestmeans of their common defence. The divided and fractious nature ofmen’s minds, however, means that mutual consent alone will not besufficient to allow them to reach and adhere to such an agreement (DJN,.ii., –). Unlike bees, men are incapable of the natural harmon-isation of their political wills and, despite what the philosophers say, menare incapable of arriving at such a harmonisation through ‘the dictatesof sane reason’ having ‘fully subdued all their passions and base lusts’.‘Surely’, says Pufendorf, ‘those men erect states upon shifting founda-tions, who show too great respect for men’s moderation and weigh allother men, and especially the vile mob, upon the scales of their ownprobity’ (DJN, .ii., ).

In fact, given the two evils threatening man’s pursuit of political secur-ity – the diversity of his inclinations and the torpor of his will – the onlyway to achieve and maintain the state-forming agreement is via the con-stitution of a single artificial will equipped with the power to compel theperformance of civil duty: ‘The first of these evils may be cured byuniting the wills of all in a perpetual bond, or by so constituting affairsthat there will be for the future but one will for all in those matters whichserve the end of society. The second may be alleviated if some power beestablished which is authorised to inflict upon those who hesitate beforethe common advantage some present evil and such as will impress itselfupon their senses.’ In striking contrast to all those who attempt to groundsovereignty in a ‘general will’ – Althusius, Rousseau, Kant – Pufendorfinsists that the sovereignty pact is not the expression of an actual or idealunion of wills: ‘Now a union of wills cannot possibly be encompassed bythe wills of all being naturally lumped into one, or by only one person

Political subjecthood and civil sovereignty

willing, and all the rest ceasing to do so, or by removing in some way thenatural variation of wills and their tendency to oppose each other, andcombining them into an abiding harmony.’ This union is rather theresult of the fear-driven agreement of all individuals to subordinate theirwills to a single agency of political decision: ‘But the only final way inwhich many wills are understood to be united is for every individual tosubordinate his will to that of one man, or of a single council, so thatwhatever that man or council shall decree on matters necessary tocommon security, must be regarded as the will of each and every person’(DJN, .ii., ). In the same way, a sovereign power ‘as may be fearedby all’ is created when all individuals have obligated themselves to usetheir strength only at the behest of a single man or council.

This is the light in which we must understand Pufendorf ’s account ofthe two pacts and one decree that give rise to the state. It is in the crucialfirst pact – sometimes misleadingly called the ‘social’ pact – that individ-uals agree to enter the state by subordinating their political wills to asingle individual or council. This pact is followed by a decree decidingwhether the form of government will be monarchical, aristocratic, ordemocratic – that is, whether the sovereign power will be administeredby a prince, a council of nobles, or an assembly drawn from the people.This decision having been taken, sovereignty is then conferred on someindividual or council through a second pact in which ‘the rulers bindthemselves to the care of common security and safety, and the rest torender them obedience, and in which there is that subjection and unionof wills, by reason of which a state is looked upon as a single person’(DJN, .ii., ).

The key to understanding Pufendorf ’s conception of the formation ofcivil sovereignty is that he regards it not as the realisation or executionof a natural capacity but as the invention and imposition of a new moralentity or status. Pufendorf rejects the idea that sovereignty pre-exists thestate-forming pact – residing in the individual’s natural freedom andpower or in God’s majesty – treating it instead as a creation of the pactitself. By agreeing to subordinate their wills to that of a single individualor council in exchange for the security pledged by the latter, the assem-bled individuals create civil sovereignty as a new ‘compound moralperson’. This composite moral personality consists of the persona of thecitizen defined by the duty of obedience, and the persona of the sove-reign defined by the duty of care and protection. While it is true that inimposing this new moral entity on themselves men act in conformitywith the law of nature – which always seeks man’s preservation – they

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

do so not in accordance with the laws of their rational and social being,but out of fear and exigency, which compels them to transform theirbeing in pursuit of security.

Pufendorf is now free to reject all attempts to derive sovereignty fromsome source higher than or independent of the pact that forms it. Hiscentral targets are Hobbes’ account of sovereignty arising via individu-als ‘donating’ their natural sovereignty (freedom and strength) to theLeviathan, and Horn’s opposed view of it originating in a transfer of ametaphysical sovereignty from God to the prince who rules by divineright. According to Pufendorf, in viewing civil sovereignty as arisingfrom the donation of natural freedom and rights, Hobbes is forced toposit a non-reciprocal pact in which the people is extinguished as bearerof natural rights, all of which pass over to the sovereign who thereforeexercises them unconditionally. For a reciprocal pact might allow indi-viduals to reclaim their donation, thereby functioning as justification forrebellion. Still, despite sympathising with Hobbes’ fear of rebellion –arising, Pufendorf suggests, from his experience of religious civil war –Pufendorf regards Hobbes’ conception of sovereignty as fundamentallyflawed. What Hobbes fails to understand, argues Pufendorf, is that sov-ereignty – a single and supreme locus of political decision and power –is not something that individuals possess in the condition of naturalfreedom, but something they create and impose in the agreement thatgives rise to the civil condition. There is no need therefore to posit a non-reciprocal pact in which the people is extinguished as a bearer of naturalfreedom and rights, because freedom is not the condition or ‘quality’ byvirtue of which they enter the pact or by virtue of which the sovereignis obligated to them: ‘And yet when a free people transfers sovereignty toa king, that people does not cease by natural death, nor is the obligationof the king founded upon that quality of the people whereby it is under-stood to be free, but whereby it will thereafter continue to be a group ofcitizens subject to one man’s sovereignty’ (DJN, .ii., ).

The property of individuals relevant to the pact and foundational forpolitical obligation is not their natural freedom and rights – as attributesof their rational and moral or irrational and desiring being – but theirneed for security, arising from their partially sociable but mutuallydestructive nature. Political obligation arises from the fact that, with thefirst pact, individuals delegate their capacity for self-defence to another,agreeing in doing so that the sovereign alone should decide the bestmeans to this end, and that he should have absolute power to coercethose who subsequently dissent from his decisions. The personae of

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citizen and sovereign thus do not pre-exist the first agreement. Rather,they are imposed by it, as a means of transforming the mode in whichmen will govern their liberty in pursuit of security. Citizens and rulerthus do not enter the second pact as bearers of natural freedoms andrights that must be traded off to produce sovereignty – and may later bereclaimed – but as bearers of the reciprocal duties of obedience and pro-tection that compose civil sovereignty as a moral person: ‘When I subjectmyself to a prince, I promise him obedience, and stipulate for myselfdefence, while the prince in accepting me as a citizen promises medefence and stipulates from me obedience. Before that promise, neitherof us was under an obligation, at least not a perfect one, I to obey him,or he to defend me’ (DJN, .., ).

Commenting on the distinctiveness of Pufendorf ’s political pact inthis regard, James Tully has remarked: ‘Therefore, unlike doctrines ofcorporate popular sovereignty, the people, although it possesses unity,never possesses supreme authority and so cannot be said to “delegate”it to a ruler and repossess it if the ruler breaks the agreement’ (Tully ,xxxiii). There is thus little support for Denzer’s argument that Pufendorfrejects Hobbes’ one-pact model because it fails to allow for a reciprocalexchange between citizen and sovereign as natural-rights-bearingpersons (Denzer , –). As far as Pufendorf is concerned, thecomplementary duties of the citizen and sovereign – to obey and toprotect – are artefacts of the agreement that allows individuals to enterthe civil status by providing them with new personae. As a result, thecomplementarity of these two kinds of obligation is such that ‘the legit-imate power of a king and the duty of citizens exactly correspond, andwe emphatically deny that a king can lawfully command anything whicha subject can lawfully refuse. For a king cannot command anything morethan agrees, or is supposed to agree, with the end of instituted civilsociety’ (DJN, .., ). Hobbes’ problem is that his conception ofthe people’s rights and freedoms is too natural – that is why he is so con-cerned with destroying them.

The arguments that Pufendorf deploys against Hobbes are even moredevastating, however, when applied to the latter’s neoscholastic oppo-nents. For if sovereignty does not pre-exist the formation of states as anatural condition of individuals, then it is nonsensical to regard it as pre-existing the state as a metaphysical substance inherent in God or theorder of being. Pufendorf is thus by turns scathing and mocking ofHorn’s account of civil sovereignty devolving from divine majesty – anaccount which sees political agreements among men as providing merely

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the empirical occasion for the attribute of divine sovereignty to flow intoa king. This view of sovereignty as a divine right ‘tears to shreds all theconventions and fundamental laws which are agreed to between kingsand subjects, touching the administration of sovereignty’ (DJN, .iii.,). More fundamentally, it fails to understand that sovereignty is amoral entity instituted by human agreement, not a metaphysical sub-stance emanating from the divine. Quoting Horn’s assertions that God‘pours it [sovereignty] forth directly upon kings after their election by thepeople’, and that sovereignty is a ‘creation of God, so that no other crea-ture in an equal or superior kind of causation, nor from any innate prin-ciple, has made any contribution to the institution of this type ofadministration’, Pufendorf comments that making such statements ‘onlybetrays a crass ignorance of moral matters’. He then continues in a moresarcastic vein:

Now if a man will consider this more deeply, he will see that such men asHornius have conceived majesty to be a physical entity, which, upon beingcreated by God, wanders about over the world with no home or resting-placeuntil it lights upon a king, who has been selected by a people, and invests himwith its august splendour. And such a man will surely be in difficult straits if heshould be pressed as to whether that majesty, before it finds a seat in some king,is substance or accident, and if the latter, how it can exist without a subject.Furthermore, when was it created, at the beginning of the world, or later? Isthere also but one majesty in the entire world, bits of which are distributed toindividual kings? Do different kings have their own special and entire majesty?When a king dies does his majesty perish with him? Or does it survive him, sep-arated like the soul from the body, or finding by a kind of metempsychosis adwelling in a new king? . . . But it is idle to inquire about the immediate causeof majesty, or supreme sovereignty, abstractly considered, since it exists only ina concrete form. (DJN, .iii., –)

Lying behind this piece of boisterous anti-metaphysical invective is ofcourse Pufendorf ’s entirely serious argument that civil sovereignty is anartefact of human agreement aimed at achieving a purely this-worldlysecurity. As we have seen, lying at the heart of this argument is his treat-ment of civil sovereignty as imposed by individuals in accordance withthe natural law end of security. This imposition gives rise to duty-bearingpersonae unknown in the natural condition, the citizen and the sovereign– personae incapable of carrying moral or religious norms into the civilcondition, where they might be used for or against the state. This recon-struction of sovereignty in terms of the fear-driven imposition of newpolitical personae is the condition of Pufendorf ’s desacralisation of pol-itics and the state. For it is the means by which he detaches the exercise

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of sovereignty from all claims to political authority lying beyond thatrequired for the worldly end of the state – security – and from moral andreligious claims in particular.

Pufendorf ’s construction of political authority is thus equally inimicalto popular-sovereignty conceptions and to divine-right theories. If sove-reignty is not the expression of supra-political capacities and rights, thenit cannot reside in the people, whether in accordance with the ‘pessimistic’doctrine of Hobbes, or the ‘optimistic’ ones of Althusius, Rousseau, andKant. For the same reason, however, sovereignty cannot not reside in Godor the metaphysical order of being, thence being transferred to princes.In viewing sovereignty as the mode of realising a moral capacity originat-ing in an extra-political domain, both popular-sovereignty and divine-right theories sacralise the state. Conversely, in treating sovereignty as anartificial deployment of supreme political power – rooted in social dangerand created by fear-driven pacts – Pufendorf ’s construction of politicalauthority is dedicated to desacralising the state. Clearly this reconstruc-tion is no less inimical to the efforts of modern moral philosophers to treatthe sovereignty pact either as an agreement between natural-rights-bearing moral persons or as the general will that arises from the rationalharmonisation of all particular wills. For Pufendorf, it is ‘discipline, notnature, that fits a man for such a society’.

Pufendorf ’s reconstruction of the concept of sovereignty gives rise tothree striking and far-reaching transformations in our understanding ofthe state and political authority. First, as Tully has argued, it leads to theseparation of sovereignty – as the supreme unified locus of political deci-sion and power – from government, as the particular form in which sov-ereignty is administered (Tully , xxxiii–xxxv). Pufendorf thus arguesthat, to the extent that they are all capable of managing a supreme andunified exercise of political decision, then each of the three forms ofgovernment – monarchy, aristocracy, democracy – is an appropriatebearer of sovereignty: ‘The capacity and inclination of one or more men,who exercise sovereignty by their own right, or as it is delegated to them,do indeed affect or modify the administration, but in no way the form ofa state’ (DJN, .v., ). If the sovereign power is an artefact of thepolitical pact, and is not donated to government by its natural or meta-physical bearer – God, the king, the people, the general will – then neithermonarchy, nor aristocracy nor democracy is its natural expression.Hence despite the fact that each of the forms of government is subject tothe forms of incompetence characteristic of the different ruling personsor groups, none is inherently more or less legitimate than the others.

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

Pufendorf thus rejects Horn’s claim that monarchy is the naturallylegitimate bearer of (divine) sovereignty by remarking that the people,having created sovereignty by agreement, are surely free to bestow it ona council or assembly if they choose. In fact this causes Pufendorf tomodify the temporal differentiation of his two pacts, observing that ifsovereignty does not pre-exist the first pact then it may be regarded asbeing created and conferred at the same time:

We realise, of course, that election is properly and exactly but a form of secur-ing sovereignty, and yet nothing appears to prevent a certain person from beingselected, and sovereignty, now first coming into being, from being conferredupon him by one and the same act. For surely it is childish to hold that in moralthings, when some right or moral quality is said to be conferred upon another,it must first have existed somewhere in separate form. Nay rather, it is clear toall that rights and other moral qualities come about by pacts from a mutualagreement of wills. (DJN, .iii., )

By parity of argument, however, neither can democracy be said to bethe naturally legitimate form of government; for here too sovereigntydoes not pre-exist the state, in the moral sovereignty of the people.Moreover, even though it is physically drawn from the people, a demo-cratic assembly is (or should be) an autonomous moral person, andtherefore cannot be understood as the people governing themselves. For,to the extent that it governs absolutely and in the interests of security,then the assembly occupies the persona of sovereign, while the peoplecontinue to have the single obligation of obedience to the sovereign(DJN, .v., –).

In short, Pufendorf ’s separation of civil and moral sovereignty allowshim to adopt a detached and pluralistic view of the relation betweenstate and government, refusing all attempts to idealise any particularform of government as the naturally legitimate bearer of (moral) sove-reignty. Once the state has been reconceived in terms of its politicalfunction – the maintenance of security through a unified and irresistibledeployment of political authority – then any form of government exer-cising sovereignty in this manner may be regarded as legitimate. In fact,Pufendorf is not concerned with (morally) legitimate and illegitimateforms of government, only with regular and irregular forms of state: ‘Wehold that the regularity of states lies in this: that each and every one ofthem appears to be directed by a single soul, as it were, or, in other words,that the supreme sovereignty, without division and opposition, is exer-cised by one will in all the parts of a state, and in all its undertakings’(DJN, .., ).

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The second, no less striking consequence of Pufendorf ’s reconstruc-tion of sovereignty is that it sequesters government from the moraljudgment of individuals. It is perhaps here that the ambivalence ofPufendorf ’s relation to Hobbes shows through most clearly. For, unlikeHobbes, Pufendorf insists that natural law judgments are operative inthe natural state and that natural law informs law-making in the civilstate. Pufendorf agrees with Hobbes, however, that it must not be left tothe individual judgment of subjects to determine whether the sovereignis legislating in accordance with natural law: ‘[T]he question is not,which is of greater value, the person of the king or the entire people . . .but whether, in view of the fact that civil sovereignty has been inventedfor the profit of all, the decision as to how to secure that end resides inthose who have subjected their will to the will of the king, or in him towhose judgment and conscience the government has been entrusted’(DJN, .vi., ). For Pufendorf, only the sovereign is in a position tomake this judgment, which he does in accordance with the fundamen-tal end of the state – security. Under circumstances threatening the exis-tence of the state, the sovereign will even be justified in infringing someof the citizen’s natural law rights – for example, sacrificing some to war– to the extent that this is in the long-term interests of public safety.

Clearly Pufendorf assumes that the dictates of natural law and thoseof ‘reason of state’ will generally coincide in the sovereign’s duty to makecivil law in accordance with natural law. In fact he seeks to hold thesetogether by treating public safety as both the end of natural law – ‘thereason for which states were founded’ – and the end governing the sov-ereign’s commands, even though these are beyond all effective moraland legal accountability. The difficulty with this solution is that theconcept of sovereignty entails that only the sovereign can decidewhether his actions are in fact in accordance with public safety or thesecurity of the state. Some commentators treat this apparent tension asindicative of Pufendorf ’s inability to integrate the doctrines of naturallaw and reason of state (Meinecke , –; Krieger , –;Denzer , –). Others, as we have noted, regard Pufendorf ’snatural law as too normative to contain a fully autonomous or ‘utilitar-ian’ conception of politics (Dreitzel ).

In light of the preceding interpretation, however, it is possible topropose that none of these accounts manages to clarify the issue. In factthe power of decision that Pufendorf ascribes to the state comes not froma theory of sovereignty or Staatsräson super-added to his doctrine ofnatural law, but from the manner in which he construes the natural law

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

pact itself. We have seen that Pufendorf treats this not as a rational agree-ment between two moral persons but as a pact between individuals tocreate two unequal personae, the subject and the sovereign. It is as a resultof this creation that citizens may not judge and dissent from the sover-eign’s commands, to the extent that prima facie these agree with the endof the state. For the fundamental condition of this end being realised isthat individuals give up this power of judgment. It as at this point thatPufendorf renders natural law immanent to the exercise of sovereignty,thereby opening the doctrine of natural law to the theories of ‘absolute’(secular) sovereignty elaborated by Bodin, Arnisaeus, and Conring.

The tension in Pufendorf ’s account of the relation between sove-reignty and natural law judgment arises therefore from the fact that hemust posit the latter as a condition of pacts being made and adhered to,while simultaneously treating the pact as annulling the individual’s righthenceforth to make such judgments regarding the sovereign’s civil laws.The decisive factor here, however, is not any putative capacity individu-als might have to govern themselves but something quite different:namely, security, which is ‘the intention or thought with which menmade up their minds to establish states’. Pufendorf continues:

Therefore, it is held that no more power was voluntarily bestowed upon thatprince than what a man of reason may judge to make to that end [of security];although what may at any particular moment work to that end is a matter fordecision not for those who do the transferring, but by him on whom that powerwas transferred. Therefore, the supreme sovereign can rightfully force citizensto all things which he judges to be of any advantage to the public good. (DJN,.vi., )

Consequently, while denying Hobbes’ assertion that civil-law commandsare themselves the source of the individual’s moral sense – as this senseis present in the natural condition – Pufendorf nonetheless acceptsHobbes’ unflinching doctrine that it is seditious for individuals in thecivil state to make their obedience to the sovereign conditional on theirknowledge of good and evil:

Yet in another sense the thesis of Hobbes can be allowed, if, that is, good andevil be taken as that which does or does not work to the advantage of the com-monwealth. For then that is surely a seditious opinion that ‘the knowledge ofgood and evil’, that is, of that which is good or evil, advantageous or disadvan-tageous to the state, ‘belongs to individuals’. That is, that each individual isempowered to pass judgment as to the aptitude of the means which a princeorders to be undertaken so as to secure the public good, with the effect that theobligation of each person depends upon that judgment. (DJN, .i., )

Political subjecthood and civil sovereignty

For, if this were the case, then the civil state would cease forthwith, con-ditional as it is on the mass of individuals giving up their right to deter-mine the best means of their common security to a single individual orcouncil. If the desacralisation of political authority entails withdrawingthe state from the sphere of moral judgment, then it also entails with-drawing moral judgment from the sphere of the state.

Finally, if Pufendorf ’s reconstruction of political authority thusrenders the state absolute in the political arena, then it simultaneouslygives birth to a ‘liberal’ sphere of extra-political rights and freedoms.Those commentators who imagine they see the ‘germ of totalitarianism’in Pufendorf ’s desacralising of politics could not be wider of the mark.For, as we have already observed, this secularising of politics was accom-panied by a no less powerful privatising of religion. If Pufendorf ’suncoupling of civil governance from transcendent morality renders thestate absolute in the political domain, then it simultaneously precludesthe exercise of political power in the moral domain. Civil society,Pufendorf argues in the De Habitu Religionis Christianae ad Vitam Civilem(), was not instituted for the end of religion – to achieve man’s sal-vation and eternal happiness – but solely for the end of worldly security(DHR, § , –). It is therefore improper for any state to make civil rightsand duties contingent on the fulfillment of religious rights and duties;just as it is unacceptable for the civil authority to be opposed on relig-ious grounds (DHR, § , –). For civil duties depend only on the com-mands of the civil sovereign, issued for the end of civil peace, and limitedto man’s external conduct in civil life; while religious duties depend onlyon the laws of God, issued for man’s eternal felicity, and concern onlyhis inner spiritual condition. The civil sovereign may not, therefore,command man’s inner religious life, unless this issues in conduct threat-ening to the republic, whereupon it ceases to be religious.

Leibniz’s iconic unity of reason and power, the sage and the prince,thus finds its mirror inversion in Pufendorf ’s insistence that the teacherand the prince represent distinct and mutually exclusive offices. On theone hand, drawing on his spiritualistic Lutheranism, Pufendorf arguesthat the teacher’s relation to his students is characterised by love andemulation, to the exclusion of all coercion and all dogma, thereby allow-ing them to seek saving truth in complete freedom, just as Christ taughtthe disciples in the primitive church (DHR, §§ –, –). On the otherhand, on the basis of his own ‘statist’ natural law, Pufendorf confinespolitical authority to the personae of the subject and ruler, boundtogether by asymmetrical duties of unconditional obedience and abso-lute command, in so far as the ruler remains indifferent to saving truth

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

(DHR, §§ –, –). Pufendorf thus reconfigures the relationbetween the pursuit of transcendent saving truth and the exercise of civilgovernance by consigning each to different statuses or zones of ‘moralspace’ – the ‘kingdom of truth’ and the ‘civil kingdom’:

The kingdom of Christ therefore is a kingdom of truth, where he, by the forceof truth, brings over our souls to his obedience; and this truth has such power-ful charms, that the kingdom of Christ needs not to be maintained by the sameforcible means and rules by which subjects must be kept in obedience to the civilpowers. And for the same reason, there need not be established a particular statein order to propagate and preserve truth, no more than it is necessary to set upa separate commonwealth where philosophy and the other sciences are to betaught. (DHR, § , )

Pufendorf ’s disarticulation of civil power from transcendent truththus precludes the possibility of an ‘unlimited’ or total society, in whichall areas of life, unified by their common dependence on God’s univer-sal justice, are equally open to governance. Instead, he effects the funda-mental ‘liberal’ separation of political and religious life. He does so,however, not to protect individual freedom from the state, but to renderthe state ‘absolute’ in the political domain, by establishing that neutral-ity to religion which signifies the expulsion of the church from the stateapparatus. This is the ‘authoritarian’ basis of Pufendorf ’s constructionof a zone of liberal religious freedoms.

We may agree with Döring, therefore, that Pufendorf ’s conception oftoleration is politically based and of limited scope, with Pufendorf refus-ing to extend toleration to the Catholic church, on the grounds of itsrefusal to accept the state’s religious neutrality (Döring ). This doesnot mean, however, that Leibniz’s conception of an ecumenical faithgrounded in transcendent reason would support a more liberal form ofreligious freedom. On the contrary, as we have seen, in continuing tomake political authority conditional on transcendent truth, Leibniz istempted to make such truth politically enforceable. Conversely, inextending the state’s power by rendering it indifferent to transcendenttruth, Pufendorf had opened a domain of liberal rights – the domain ofconduct incapable of threatening the republic – which could be furtherexpanded. This expansion was undertaken by Pufendorf ’s most famousfollower, Thomasius, whose arguments for the toleration of variousheresies contrast sharply with Leibniz’s views in this regard.

The scale and significance of Pufendorf ’s reconstruction of moral andpolitical philosophy should now be apparent. In order to detranscen-dentalise practical philosophy, in accordance with the desacralising of

Political subjecthood and civil sovereignty

political governance, Pufendorf had to re-invent it. It was to this end thathe sought to replace the Christian–metaphysical cultivation of moralpersonality with a pluralised conception of offices, distributed in civilspace in accordance with the ends of civil life. This also led Pufendorfto reject the moral–philosophical mode of acceding to civil duties – viathe individual’s self-recovery of their higher rational and moral being –in favour of a chastened recognition of the conduct that best serves asocial being in need of security. Finally, this need to reconstruct ethicsled Pufendorf to construct political sovereignty not as the means bywhich man perfects his natural being, or expresses his rational being inthe political sphere, but as the means by which his moral nature is trans-formed in accordance with the end of civil security. Pufendorf arguedthat the detranscendentalising of morality and politics was conditionalon excluding neoscholastic and rationalist moral philosophy from thedomain of civil ethics. We must observe, however, that three centuriesafter Pufendorf ’s campaign latter-day versions of this kind of philoso-phy maintain dominant positions in the humanities academy – a domi-nance felt most immediately and most ironically in the hermeneuticassimilation of Pufendorf himself to the agendas of neo-Aristotelianand neo-Kantian moral philosophy. Still, this dominance notwithstand-ing, the question of the success of Pufendorf ’s reconstruction of aca-demic ethics and politics remains open. For it is not immediately clearwhether the power of modern moral philosophy is confined to the aca-demic sphere itself, where its sway might be treated as symptomatic ofthe ‘privatisation of religion’ that attended the desacralisation of poli-tics. Alternatively, it might be that Pufendorf ’s desacralising strategy wasnever completely successful, and that the governmental means of isolat-ing the exercise of civil authority from the pursuit of moral truth haveproved far more fragile than Pufendorf hoped. In discussing these pos-sibilities we turn to two very different kinds of philosopher: ChristianThomasius, sometimes described as Pufendorf ’s greatest disciple, andImmanuel Kant, who was responsible for passing the metaphysics ofmorals and politics into the ‘modern’ period.

Pufendorf ’s civil philosophy

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

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Christian Thomasius (–) was the leading exponent ofPufendorfian civil philosophy in late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century Protestant Germany. Given that he was also a famous – or noto-rious, depending on one’s viewpoint – anti-scholastic educationalreformer, and considering the standing he achieved as an academic, cul-tural commentator, and jurisconsult to the Brandenburg-Prussian state,one of the most puzzling aspects of Thomasius is his current relativeobscurity. Until very recently, in the Anglophone academy the signifi-cance of his multifaceted work has been known only to a handful of spe-cialists (Barnard ; Barnard ; Beck , –; Haakonssen; Schneewind , –). The appearance of important newstudies by younger scholars suggests that this situation might be chang-ing (Ahnert ; Hochstrasser ; P. Schröder ). Even inGermany however Thomasius has been described as ‘forgotten’ (W.Schmidt ). It is true that the Germanists of the s claimed himas a hero of the Frühaufklärung, yet Frank Grunert’s bibliography suggeststhat serious attention to Thomasius’ jurisprudential, political, andethical work is largely a post-war development, picking up momentumduring the seventies and eighties (Grunert ; Grunert a). It islikely that this renewed interest in Thomasius, and in early modernnatural law and practical philosophy more generally, has been driven byGerman moral philosophy’s post-war concern to recover an ethical basisfor politics (Dreitzel ; Dreitzel ). This, as we shall see, turns outto be a somewhat ironic light in which to view a political jurist whoseprime concern was to find a political basis for ethics.

There are several reasons for Thomasius’ relative obscurity in themodern period. In the first place, unlike Pufendorf ’s, Thomasius’ worksdid not receive European-wide dissemination in the late seventeenth andearly eighteenth century. Here several contributory factors come into

play. Most of Thomasius’ works were written in German rather thanLatin, which made them less open to translation and dissemination thanPufendorf ’s accomplished Latinity. Pufendorf was also earlier in thefield than his follower, publishing the definitive civil reconstruction ofnatural law in his De Jure sixteen years before Thomasius’ InstitutionesJurisprudentiae Divinae of . These factors combined to secure thetranslation and dissemination of Pufendorf ’s natural law into otherProtestant European countries which were seeking a solution to theproblem of confessional conflict via some form of desacralisation. JeanBarbeyrac’s French translations of Pufendorf ’s De Jure () and DeOfficio () – intended to make the new civil ethics and politics avail-able to the Huguenot Diaspora – and Gershom Carmichael’s relatedannotation of the De Officio () for teaching duties in the ScottishEnlightenment, point up the more localised cultural setting within whichThomasius’ works circulated: Protestant Germany (Mautner ;Moore and Silverthorne ; Othmer ). Basil Kennet’s Englishtranslation of the De Jure () and Andrew Tooke’s of the De Officio() – no doubt feeding into English debates over the ‘religious ques-tion’ – tell a similar story. This does not mean, however, that Thomasius’work was narrow or provincial. On the contrary, his decision to lectureand write in German, like Barbeyrac’s to translate Pufendorf intoFrench, was governed by the desire to expand the audience for civil phi-losophy. Both men sought to reach beyond the Latinate readership ofthe universities – which they regarded as mired in scholasticism and con-fessionalism – in order to address other vernacular publics, especially thepolitici and administrative nobility, many of whom were not inured toLatin. Nonetheless, the fact that Thomasius’ works were not translatedinto other national languages in the early modern period helps toexplain why they remain untranslated today.

The second reason for Thomasius’ comparative obscurity is moreintrinsic, arising from the difficulty of clarifying his intellectual relationto Pufendorf and an associated ‘unevenness’ in his intellectual positions.In our earlier discussion of the Preliminary Dissertation that he prefixed tohis Institutiones, we have already taken note of Thomasius’ own accountof his conversion to Pufendorfian natural law. In experiencing the fulldesacralising force of Pufendorf ’s arguments, Thomasius took sides inthe intellectual civil war that was unfolding between civil and metaphys-ical philosophy. Further, in dedicating himself to the study of politics andGerman Staatsrecht – while nonetheless remaining committed to a pietis-tic form of Lutheranism – Thomasius was heir to a mix of ‘statist’ juris-prudence and spiritualistic theology very similar to Pufendorf ’s

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

intellectual sources. Nonetheless, there are important differences in themanner in which the two thinkers configured and used their commonsources.

As jurisconsults, both men belonged to the stratum of gelehrte Räte oracademic advisors to government, in which university duties were rou-tinely combined with political ones. Without renouncing his pedagogi-cal interests and activities, Pufendorf ’s life carried him from theacademic to the political end of this career spectrum – as can be seen inhis roles as privy councillor, secretary of state and royal historian at thecourt of Charles XI of Sweden (–), and then as court historianand judicial privy councillor at the Brandenburg-Prussian court(–) (Döring , –; Döring ). Despite his occasionalforays as a practising advocate and his own role as a judicial adviser tothe Brandenberg-Prussian court, Thomasius’ activities were concen-trated at the academic end of the spectrum, in his role as a founding lawprofessor in Brandenburg’s new University of Halle. Established by theHohenzollerns in , as an institution for the training of jurists andclergy independent of the orthodox Lutheran universities, Halle pro-vided Thomasius with a relatively safe haven from which to launch aprogramme of academic-cultural reform that was broadly in keepingwith Hohenzollern Religionspolitik (Hammerstein ; Schindling ).From here he could conduct a remarkable one-man campaign to dis-mantle the neoscholastic curriculum and replace it with one suited toforming the future jurists and statesmen of a deconfessionalised princelyterritorial state.

If his intense engagement with the problem of cultural pedagogy gaveThomasius’ civil philosophy a different emphasis to its Pufendorfianmodel, then his version was also set apart by an associated difference inintellectual and theological emphasis. Both writers drew on Lutherantheological voluntarism – the doctrine of the will’s dominance of reasonand reason’s consequential incapacity for thinking transcendent ideas –as a means of attacking metaphysics and admitting statist civil sciencesto the ethical domain. We have already suggested that Lutheran volun-tarism was the source of an important parting of the ways in Germanacademic culture. For while the insistence on the inaccessibility of thedivine attributes to human understanding supported a strong separationof revealed and natural knowledge, this could be used for two quitedifferent purposes. On the one hand, Lutheran fideists like DanielHofmann, and later the Halle Pietists with whom Thomasius was asso-ciated, could use it to attack neoscholastic metaphysics in order to defenda spiritualistic theology; that is, a theology grounded in a biblicistic

Introduction

inwardness hostile to all metaphysical and rational theology (Brecht; Sparn ). But, on the other hand, the separation of revealedand natural knowledge and rejection of metaphysical rationalism couldalso be used to secure the intellectual autonomy of ‘empirical’ sciences,as Arnisaeus had done in his ‘instrumentalist’ political science, andPufendorf in his ‘empiricist’ reconstruction of natural law. UnlikePufendorf, in his early natural law work Thomasius remained in transi-tion between these two anti-metaphysical strategies. In the Institutiones of, Thomasius thus attacks the metaphysical confusion of theologyand philosophy in order to provide a secular foundation for natural law.Yet he also uses this attack in order to admit positive biblical command-ments, as compensations for the incapacity of natural knowledge,thereby deviating from Pufendorf ’s strict exclusion of revealed Christianlaw from the domain of natural law. The transitional character ofThomasius’ thought in this regard accounts, perhaps, for its greaterunevenness in comparison with Pufendorf ’s – an unevenness that seeshim oscillating between a number of different intellectual and theolog-ical positions during the s. We will return to these issues below.

If, however, Thomasius’ transition to a detranscendentalised naturallaw was less clear cut and elegant than Pufendorf ’s, Thomasius none-theless contributed something important to his mentor’s agenda.Pufendorf had indeed realised that for the desacralisation of civilgovernance to succeed it would be necessary to sever the configurationof civil duties from the cultivation of Christian moral personality. Wehave seen, moreover, that he made a fundamental contribution to thisprogramme through his relegation of the unified Christian–metaphysi-cal concept of the person in favour of the pluralised construction of civilpersonae. It was Thomasius’ achievement, however, to recognise thedepth of the academic-cultural transformation that would have to takeplace if Pufendorf ’s projected pluralisation of civil personhood were totake root in the educational institutions where young Protestant jurists,officials, and statesmen acquired their intellectual deportments. Thesewere the circumstances in which Thomasius developed his Affektenlehre –or doctrine of the passions. Through this moral therapeutics he soughtto take over Pufendorf ’s voluntarist and pluralist conception of civil‘offices’, while simultaneously grounding this conception in a paideia ofpassional restraint capable of displacing the intellectualist paiedeia ofProtestant neoscholasticism.

As we noted in our Introduction, Thomasius’ Preliminary Dissertationto the Institutiones contains a good biographical pointer to the larger his-torical significance of his programme. In attacking Alberti’s heresy

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

allegation against Pufendorf, Thomasius identifies the two centralerrors of his neoscholastic opponents. In making this charge, whichdepends on the metaphysical doctrine that divine and human justiceform a single order, Alberti was applying moral–theological categoriesin the domain of civil jurisprudence, where they have no business.Further, in doing so, he was usurping ‘the power and right to declaresomeone a heretic [which] belongs to no private person – even if theywere great and famous – but only to the prince’, who would himself bebest advised not to use it (PD, § , –). In these remarks we can discernthe central characteristic and driving force of Thomasius’ programme.This lies in his recognition of the historical complicity between themerging of the theological and civil sciences in scholastic metaphysicsand the merging of religious and political authority in confessionalsociety (Döring b). This recognition in turn holds the key to under-standing the relation between the two wings of Thomasius’ remarkableprogramme: on the one hand, his cultural–pedagogical campaign toreplace metaphysical scholasticism with an ‘eclectic’ array of civil sci-ences and a privatised religion of faith and grace; and, on the other, hispolitical–jurisprudential campaign to strip all civil power from the relig-ious estate, transferring this power wholly and solely to the secular sove-reign territorial state (Dreitzel ; Wiebking ). For Thomasius,these campaigns formed the dual wings of a single programme ofdeconfessionalisation because, perhaps more clearly than any of hiscontemporaries, he saw that the catastrophic linkage between the exer-cise of political authority and the pursuit of holiness had been forgedin the theology and philosophy faculties of the confessional university.

Thomasius thus saw the struggle between metaphysical rationalismand civil voluntarism as something far more consequential than a clashbetween rival theories of moral being. He realised that, in programmingthe ethical regimen through which young intellectuals relate to them-selves and accede to their duties, these doctrines gave shape to differentdeportments of the person, different kinds of moral being. In particular,by training young intellectuals to accede to their civil powers and dutiesthrough self-sanctifying insight into true faith or pure reason, the meta-physical rationalism of Schulphilosophie gave rise to an intellectual deport-ment inimical to the governance of deconfessionalised states. For thismode of governance required that individuals accede to their civil dutieson the basis of their status as subjects of the desacralised Rechtsstaat.

Here, though, we reach the third and least tractable of all thedifficulties confronting modern attempts to understand Thomasius. For,as we have already observed in our Introduction, since Kant the history

Introduction

of moral philosophy has been written as if metaphysical rationalism andcivil voluntarism were indeed nothing more than conflicting ideas or the-ories, destined to be reconciled in Kant’s final discovery of the categori-cal imperative – a pure thought giving rational law to the will. In treatingthe metaphysics of transcendent insight and the ‘civics’ of politicalcommand as the partial viewpoints of a single moral subject – therebysetting the scene for their reconciliation in the person who commandsthemselves through transcendent insight into the moral law – post-Kantian philosophical history renders itself incapable of comprehend-ing the historical struggle between metaphysical and civil philosophy. Forthis was not a struggle within the moral person, open to resolution via aself-reflexive moral philosophy. It was a contest between rival cultu-ral–political groups locked in a bitter struggle to control and configurethe cultural institutions in which different moral personae were fash-ioned. So great, though, is the obstacle posed by post-Kantian philosoph-ical history to our understanding of Thomasius, that it demands adedicated discussion.

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For those of us living in ‘liberal democratic’ states, where the problemsof social pacification and social discipline have receded behind the edu-cational, health, welfare, disciplinary, and electoral systems that con-tinue to solve them, it requires a major effort of historical understandingto come to terms with the cultural and political circumstances in whichThomasius elaborated his version of civil philosophy. In this regard, weshould recall Pufendorf ’s comment regarding the state: namely, thatthose ‘who have never experienced the losses consequent upon [its] non-existence . . . because ignorant of its advantages, give no heed to it, orat least live in it in such a way as not to value its excellence’ (DJN, .i.,). Thomasius was confronted by circumstances in which the emer-gent princely territorial states, operating within the Empire as a federa-tion of independent political enterprises, were still centrally preoccupiedwith the post-Westphalian problems of social pacification, deconfession-alisation, and state-building, looking to the universities for the jurispru-dential, political, cultural, and economic expertise that might help solvethem. The challenge to historical understanding posed by this differencebetween Thomasius’ circumstances and our own becomes insurmount-able, however, if liberal democracy is joined to the telos of post-Kantianhistory of philosophy, written in terms of the progressive reconciliation

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

of intellectualism and empiricism, rationalism and voluntarism. Forunder these conditions Thomasius’ programme only becomes visible tothe extent that it anticipates or deviates from a single normative line ofhistorical development: the reciprocal emergence of democratic societyand philosophical truth, joined in the trope of a society of rationally self-legislating individuals.

Werner Schneiders’ Naturrecht und Liebesethik; Zur Geschichte der praktis-chen Philosophie im Hinblick auf Christian Thomasius (Natural Law and the Ethicof Love: On the History of Practical Philosophy with Reference to ChristianThomasius) is the most important and influential study of Thomasius todate, and one from which I have learned much. Nonetheless, despite itswealth of insights, this study remains too heavily indebted to the proto-cols of post-Kantian philosophical history to free Thomasian civil phi-losophy from the web of misunderstanding spun around it. For all hisefforts to show Thomasius’ independent importance, Schneiders fails todo justice to the conflictual cultural context of Thomasius’ intellectualprogramme, placing him instead within the history of moral philosophywhich, in turn, remains a history of the struggle to reconcile rationalismand voluntarism. As a result, Thomasius’ central preoccupation – hisconcern to develop a statist political jurisprudence of church law(Staatskirchenrecht) – is marginalised by Schneiders’ account. In fact itfinally settles into its accustomed post-Kantian place, as a symptom ofthe ‘failure’ to reconcile voluntarism and rationalism, coercive law andself-governing morality. In briefly negotiating Schneiders’ account, wewill find a way to relocate Thomasius outside the history of moralphilosophy.

Schneiders sets his story of Thomasius’ splitting of law and moralityor jurisprudence and moral philosophy against the teleological backdropprovided by a philosophical–historical account of their originalharmony. According to Schneiders this harmony was first forged in thepatristic synthesis of natural law – as a body of universal rational rulesof moral and social conduct – and the philosophico-theological tradi-tion of Caritas ordinata, or well-ordered love (Schneiders , –). Thisharmonisation of natural law and moral philosophy was in turn depen-dent on the prior synthesis of the two philosophical theologies that fedinto the teaching of Caritas ordinata: the doctrine of Platonic eros whichconceived knowledge of God in terms of the adept’s ascent of the hier-archy of being through self-purifying intellectual love; and the Christianagape doctrine, centred in the command to love the supreme being asthe key to salvation (–). Ignoring Thomasius’ own view that such

Thomasius and the history of moral philosophy

syntheses amount to a ‘mish-mash of theology and philosophy’,Schneiders treats Augustine’s version as reconciling natural law and theethic of love, jurisprudence and moral philosophy – just, indeed as Rileydoes (). For this, Schneiders argues, allowed the Platonic hierarchy,ascended through intellectual love of God, to be superimposed on theontological order of the cosmos established by divine natural law. TheAugustinian synthesis thus provided love with a ‘right’ or ‘just’ order –supplementing sheer affect with a normative-cognitive dimension –while simultaneously supplying the formal order of natural law with amoral content: love of God and one’s neighbour (Schneiders ,–). It simultaneously permitted the ascetic or therapeutic ars ofPlatonic erotics to undergo a theoretical sublimation, by grounding themin a rational theology of the moral order, or a philosophical theory ofthe moral law (–).

Transposed into the Schneiders’ philosophical history, it is not surpris-ing that Thomasius’ entire jurisprudential, pedagogical, and politicalprogramme is made to turn on his moral philosophy, principally ontwo works: the Einleitung zur Sittenlehre (Introduction to Ethics, ) andthe Ausübung der Sittenlehre (Practice of Ethics, ). Schneiders regardsThomasius’ use of the concept vernünftige Liebe or ‘reasonable love’ in theEinleitung as a late blooming of the Caritas ordinata tradition. In continuingto affirm man’s capacity to conform his will to a rational knowledge of‘just love’, this concept maintains the priority of moral theory over moraltherapeutics and, with it, the priority of moral philosophy over positivistjurisprudence (, –). The disintegration that Schneiders seesoccurring with the Ausübung of is therefore marked by the autonom-ising of Thomasius’ therapeutics of passional self-restraint, now whollyoriented to the achievement of inner tranquillity independent of rationalknowledge of the good (–, –). Under these circumstances lawcan no longer attempt to enact the ‘loving justice’ originating in individ-ual moral consciousness and becomes, by default rather than design, apurely external discipline serving the end of civil order – a developmentthat Schneiders locates in Thomasius’ late natural law work, theFundamenta Juris Naturae et Gentium of (–). Cut loose from moraltheory by a voluntarist doctrine of the pre-eminence of the will overreason, and giving succour to a statist doctrine of the pre-eminence ofpublic security over individual reason and rights, it appears thatThomasius’ Affektenlehre shattered the original harmony of law and moral-ity, leaving us moderns with only the shards: a practice of private ethicaltherapy, and a system of public legal coercion.

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

At this point, however, we should pause and take stock of the fact thatwe have passed through the post-Kantian looking-glass. In the worldthat Schneiders sketches for us on the other side, Thomasius’ separationof law and politics from the metaphysics of morals has lost its historicalanchorage in the campaign to desacralise the culture and politics of theearly modern state. Instead, it floats before us in the distorted and anach-ronistic form of a philosophical mistake: the positivist divorce of ethicalpractice from moral theory, political governance from individual self-governance. It is time to restore our sense of historical perspective.

In the first place, the Caritas ordinata doctrine encountered byThomasius and Pufendorf was not a manifestation of an early-Christiansynthesis of natural law and the Platonic love-ethic. Rather, as welearned from our discussion of Leibniz and the neoscholastic naturaljurists (..), this doctrine was a product of the early modern conflictbetween civil and metaphysical natural law. In fact it was elaborated bysuch metaphysical jurists and theologians as Placcius, Veltheim, Prasch,Rachel, Alberti, and Leibniz expressly to attack the ‘profane’ line ofnatural law running from Grotius through Pufendorf to Thomasius(Schneider ). Far from representing some sort of quasi-timelesswisdom, the doctrine and discipline of a self-purifying ascent of theladder of being to the vision of God’s just love – at whose apex Leibnizcould pronounce Justitia est caritas sapientis – was in fact elaborated tocombat Pufendorf ’s rival civil derivation of duties. This, we recall,derives political obligation from the rules required to preserve civilpeace, and was intended to uncouple law and politics from moral phi-losophy.

The historical genesis and role of the early modern Caritas ordinata doc-trine are revealed in an attack on Thomasius’ Affektenlehre, published in by someone using the nom de guerre of ‘an old theologian’. Accordingto this critic, in focusing on the governance of the passions Thomasius’doctrine removes the self-purifying pursuit of holiness from natural law,thereby allowing even statists and atheists to qualify as ethical:

So, firstly, it does not suffice for a complete Christian ethics to know how to dis-cipline the affects – in which Herr Thomas[ius] claims the whole of ethics con-sists – because occasionally the utterly un-Christian statists and atheists arecapable of this in a quite masterly way. But ethics also includes the doctrine ofthe highest good and true felicity, whose attainment is the principal reason forteaching and learning ethics. Further, the theory of the virtues (through whichtrue happiness is attained) should also illuminate a man’s immortal soul with thebrilliance of the true light of virtue, and implant there these virtues so that the

Thomasius and the history of moral philosophy

soul may turn to God – [the God] from whom these virtues came and whosegrace and holy dwelling they lost through original sin – again ascending toreunite with him, once more able to appear worthy and capable before God.Just as among the pagan philosophers Plato had recognised and taught that thetrue felicity consists in union with God. Because of this and other excellent doc-trines he was called the Divine Plato. Then if I have God, so I certainly have / Thatwhich will eternally delight me. Namely, the highest good, the highest pleasure, andthe highest tranquillity of the soul. (KTS, –)

Even in Leibniz’s rendering – focused in the claim that civil dutiesshould be derived from the sage’s enlightened insight into the theo-ratio-nal conception of justice – the role of this doctrine was to defend theright of Protestant moral theologians and philosophers to provide moralnorms for the exercise of civil power. Its abstract beauty notwithstand-ing, the Caritas ordinata doctrine was in fact a theo-rationalist weapon ofresistance to the detranscendentalising of ethics and the desacralising ofpolitics. It was wielded in a ferocious and uncompromising manner by‘Christian philosophers’ intent on preserving the civil authority of theclerical–academic estate. Thomasius thus encountered the historicalreality of the doctrine of ‘just love’ in Alberti’s heresy allegation againstPufendorf, and in the machinations of a phalanx of enemies – Alberti,Johann Benedict Carpzov (the younger), and Carpzov’s brother Samuel,pastor to the Saxon court – who succeeded in having the court banThomasius from lecturing on theological topics, effectively deprivinghim of his livelihood and compelling him to leave Leipzig for Halle in (Grunert b; Lieberwirth ).

It compromises the neutrality of scholarship therefore if theformal–theoretical character of the Caritas ordinata doctrine is allowed tofunction as the telos of philosophical history or as a norm of historicaljudgment; for this leads Thomasius’ self-conscious rejection of this doc-trine to be seen as a philosophical mistake, as a deviation from the truehistory of moral philosophy. By identifying this normative doctrine withthe priority of moral theory over ethical culture – and by treatingThomasius’ rejection of it as the source of the ‘fragmentation’ of moral-ity and law – Schneiders fails to understand the actual role of formal the-orisation in neoscholastic metaphysical natural law. Here, as we haveseen, formalisation is itself a type of ethical culture, tying the intellec-tual purity of concepts to the moral purity of the one who is to thinkthem (.., ..). As for the ‘old theologian’, so for Leibniz and the neo-scholastic natural jurists, formalising abstraction is a means of groom-ing the purified or illuminated intellectual deportment required for

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intelligising the pure ideas from which empirical ethics, law, and politicsare supposed to devolve.

Thomasius’ explicit rejection of formal moral theory must thereforebe seen as symptomatic of a conflict between two autonomous intellec-tual cultures: namely, the civil philosophers’ regimen of passional self-restraint – grounded in their Epicurean anthropology of the rationallyuncontrollable affects – and the metaphysicians’ culture of intellectualself-purification, grounded in the Christian–Platonic anthropology ofthe body-darkened senses. In his depiction of reason and the senses, the‘old theologian’ is doing no more than invoking the figure of homo duplexand thus setting the anthropological scene for an exercise in contempla-tive self-purification: ‘Reason which has not been enlightened by God isa false, deceptive light . . . bears a fleshly cast and is darkened by thecloud of fleshly affects. It looks only to its own honour, praise and inter-ests, through which man . . . becomes fickle and volatile’ (KTS, ). Forall its greater philosophical sophistication, Leibniz’s construction ofrationalist enlightenment is an improvisation on the same anthropolog-ical theme and self-formative culture: ‘The divine perfections are con-cealed in all things, but very few know how to discover them there.Hence there are many who are learned without being illumined,because they believe not God or the light but only their earthly teachersor their external senses and so remain in the contemplation of imper-fections’ (Lm, ; Gu, , ).

As we have noted in our discussion of his Foreword to Grotius, farfrom failing to master this Christian–Platonic anthropology, Thomasiuswas fully conversant with it as a ‘secret theology’, dividing its practition-ers into the orthodox, who used it to formalise doctrine, and the esoter-ics, who used it to practise a secret form of spiritual direction: ‘Theorthodox in fact [descend] from refining Platonic disputations regardingthe divine being, the esoterics though from the Platonic doctrine regard-ing the end of true wisdom: namely, union with God through the way ofpurification and enlightenment. So everything leads either to idle spec-ulation or enthusiasm and, thereby, simple active Christianity is forgot-ten’ (VG, ). Further, as we shall soon see in more detail, Thomasius wasacutely aware of the role of Christian–Platonic anthropology in con-structing concepts of justice common to the divine and earthly realms.Ascribing to this Christian metaphysics of law precisely the mixing oftheological and civil sciences he held to be complicit with the blurring ofreligious and civil discipline in confessional society, Thomasius repudi-ated it as unsuited to the formation of the young politici of a desacralised

Thomasius and the history of moral philosophy

state. In failing to grasp this historical state of affairs, and in marginalis-ing Thomasius for not grounding his positive ethics and jurisprudencein a pure moral theory, post-Kantian history of philosophy providesan uncanny echo of the original attacks made on Pufendorf andThomasius by their self-exalting metaphysical opponents.

We are now in a position to reformulate Thomasius’ relation to thehistory of moral philosophy. Accepting for argument’s sake the meta-physical conception of moral philosophy – as the discipline responsiblefor uncovering the norms of moral conduct in formally theorised moralconcepts or laws – we can say that, far from failing to realise this concep-tion through the unripeness of his time or intellect, Thomasius analysedand repudiated it, as formative of an intellectual deportment unsuitedto those charged with the political–jurisprudential governance of civilsociety. Rather than deviating from the history of metaphysical moralphilosophy, Thomasius’ civil philosophy collided with it, encountering itas an obstacle to the secularisation of culture and politics. Moreover, helocated its weak point at precisely that place where metaphysical specu-lation doubled as confessional enculturation: its formation of an intel-lectual deportment that tied the performance of civil offices to thepursuit of moral purity. Thomasius’ partitioning of law and morality –his programme for expelling neoscholastic metaphysics of morals fromthe teaching of jurisprudence and the operation of the law – was thusnot something he fell into by default, after dropping out of the true syn-thesis of law and the love-ethic achieved by the metaphysics of Caritasordinata. On the contrary, it was something that he spent his life workingtowards, gradually configuring the right array of civil sciences andethical disciplines required to form jurists capable of separating theircivil and religious duties – this being the pluralistic deportment to whichneoscholastic and rationalist metaphysics were jointly inimical.Thomasius’ appearance in post-Kantian philosophical history – wherehe personifies a process of cultural fragmentation triggered by the failureto develop a transcendental moral philosophy – thus masks a quitedifferent reality: a programme of cultural secularisation and pluralisa-tion triggered by philosophy’s failure to detranscendentalise itself.

If, then, we are to begin to understand the historical reality ofThomasius’ deconfessionalising programme, we must forgo the frame-work of post-Kantian philosophical history in its entirety. This must bereplaced with one capable of comprehending the way Thomasius usedthe intellectual resources and social position to which he was heir, to dealwith the volatile religious and political circumstances in which he found

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himself. Rather than treating Thomasius as a minor figure in a traditionof moral philosophy that he strenuously repudiated, we shall explorefour lines of inquiry that position him as a major force in the politi-cal–jurisprudential deconfessionalisation of early modern society. First,we shall observe that if Thomasius launched a campaign to destroymetaphysical rationalism and the neoscholastic curriculum – replacingit with an eclectic education in the civil sciences – this was because heregarded the intellectual deportment it formed as one inimical to thecivil–pluralist comportment required by the young jurists and statesmenof a deconfessionalising state (.). Second, in discussing the role ofThomasius’ Affektenlehre in his reconstruction of the academic curricu-lum, we shall concentrate on its role as an alternative paideia to the meta-physical anthropology of neoscholasticism. This was one intended toreplace the ‘monkish’ intellectualism of metaphysical scholasticism witha culture of self-restraint suited to the plurality of civil sciences theyoung jurists would study, and the plurality of offices they would occupyas advisers to the territorial sovereign and as citizens of the secular state(.). Third, we shall show that in the domain of natural law, Thomasius’Affektenlehre, while indeed offering a voluntarist alternative to metaphys-ical rationalism, nonetheless impeded the uncoupling of jurisprudencefrom moral philosophy, functioning instead as a new (detranscendental-ised) moral-philosophical foundation for natural law (.). Finally, weshall see that this uncoupling took place not in Thomasius’ natural lawbut in his political jurisprudence or Staatsrecht, specifically in hisStaatskirchenrecht or political jurisprudence of church law, which wasThomasius’ central preoccupation and formed the cutting edge of hisdeconfessionalising programme (.). These are the four areas that nowlie open for exploration.

.

Despite their good spirit and general informativeness, those accounts ofThomasius’ educational reforms couched in terms of his enlightenedattitudes, his defence of intellectual freedom, and his concern for his stu-dents’ moral welfare can hardly do justice to the scope or trenchancy ofThomasius’ programme to abolish the neoscholastic curriculum andassemble a new one in its place (Schubart-Fikentscher ). Thomasius’programme was driven neither by his solicitude for his students, nor byany adherence to ‘enlightenment rationality’ – he remained resolutelyhostile to metaphysical rationalism – but by his acute sense of the role of

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Protestant neoscholasticism in the culture and governance of the con-fessional state. Thomasius probably acquired or at least honed thisawareness during his time at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder inBrandenburg where, concerned by the standard of teaching at theirhome university of Leipzig, his father Jacob had sent him to study law(Lieberwirth , ). Gerhard Oestreich has argued that the aca-demic culture of late-seventeenth-century Frankfurt was informed bya mix of Cartesian philosophy, Lipsian–neo-Stoic political science,Grotian natural law, and moderate Arminian Calvinism – in fact just thecombination of statist civil science and spiritualist theology informingThomasius’ version of civil philosophy (Oestreich ; Thieme b).

From this perspective, Leipzig’s reigning Protestant scholasticism –intellectually grounded in Protestant Schulmetaphysik and institutionallyanchored in the power bloc of the theology and philosophy faculties –must have seemed particularly offensive to Thomasius’ emerging politi-cal and religious sensibility. Certainly, by the time the disaffected prodi-gal returned to Leipzig in he was armed with a programme for theroot and branch extirpation of this neoscholastic curriculum. After a fewyears practising as an advocate, he joined the university as a Privatdozentand proceeded to publicise this programme in a series of lectures, dis-putations, and essays – later collected in the Kleine Teutsche Schriften (ShorterGerman Writings ) – and in the Introductio ad Philosophiam Aulicam of, translated into German as Einleitung zur Hof-Philosophie (Introductionto Court Philosophy) in . If the lectures and essays sketch a wide-ranging and far-reaching reconstruction of the arts–law curriculum,designed to produce a propaedeutic suited to the formation of politicaljurists, then the Hof-Philosophie leaves us in no doubt regarding the sourceof the corruption that had ruined the academic sciences – the disciplineof metaphysics. If, in Thomasius’ eyes, the mixing of theological andcivil sciences in metaphysics had led religion into a speculative dogmat-ics lacking all inward ethical power, then it had also corrupted law andpolitics by implicating them in the miscegenation of religious and civilauthority that characterised the confessional state.

.. Dismantling the scholastic curriculum

The lectures and essays produced by Thomasius between and – in which he threw down the gauntlet to Leipzig neoscholasticism andsketched his new curriculum – are programmatic rather than systematicworks, by turns far-sighted and combative, satirical and mordant.

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Nonetheless, they were dedicated to reshaping the institutional culturein which systematic scholarship was produced, and they remain seriousand intellectually challenging works. At their centre lies Thomasius’acute sense of a relationship that those of us coming after Kant have thegreatest difficulty in comprehending: the relation between the elabora-tion and transmission of particular philosophies and sciences (on the onehand) and the formation of particular kinds of intellectual deportmentin and through this elaboration and transmission (on the other). Theprime focus of Thomasius’ concern in this regard was the neoscholasticphilosophical preparation students underwent before entering the threehigher faculties; for he regarded this preparation as wholly unsuited tothe formation of future jurists and state officials.

The character of Thomasius’ concern with his students’ philosophi-cal preparation is signalled in the essay Wie ein junger Mensch zu informierensei (How a Young Man is to be Educated, ), whose sub-title runs:‘Christian Thomas makes a proposal to university students in which hesets out how, within a three-year period, he intends to educate a youngman – who has decided to uprightly serve God and the world in civil lifeand to live as an honest and gallant man [honnet und galant homme] – inphilosophy and the particular parts of jurisprudence.’ Observing thatthe university consists of the faculties of law, medicine, and theology,‘under which philosophy is an instrument of the higher faculties, or atleast should be’, Thomasius indicates the philosophical dispositionsuited to future jurists: ‘Therefore I also demand as my auditors suchindividuals as do not take the mere shell of philosophy as their final goal– and following the erroneous pagan doctrine seek their highest good inspeculation – but such as strive to turn their philosophy to the real benefitof the human race’ (KTS, ).

Setting theology to one side – commenting only that he regrets its sec-tarian controversies and its use of philosophy as an instrument –Thomasius passes quickly over medicine, confessing his ignorance ofthis noble art but remarking that he regards it as an ethical rather thana scientific discipline. On reaching his own domain of jurisprudence,however, he pauses to reflect that he has long found the philosophicalpreparation given to his students unsuited to their future calling, and thatas a result:

for several years I have reflected on how I might provide that necessary instru-ment, philosophy, in a form that one could use in jurisprudence, and [I have]required as the type of my future auditors such individuals who have resolvedto cultivate philosophy to the degree that it is capable of establishing particular

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benefits in civil life and especially in jurisprudence. This is so that through thepropositions of philosophy [Welt-Weisheit] they will be enabled to honestly applytheir understanding and will to the needs of humanity, to support the generalpeace, and to skilfully serve the commonwealth in whatever political offices itdetermines. (KTS, –).

In fact Thomasius published some of the fruits of this reflection theyear before, in his essay Von den Mängeln der aristotelischen Ethik (On the Defectsof Aristotelian Ethics, ). Here he provided an acerbic analysis of thelimits of neoscholastic moral philosophy, at the same time outlining thenew arrangement of disciplines that he was assembling as a post-confes-sional arts degree for jurists. Thomasius begins by arguing that for youngmen to acquire the manners and knowledge required for prudent partic-ipation in the affairs of life and the state, three conditions must be met:

it is necessary first that a young man seek a certain ground for exploring thetruth; next that he learn to conform his morals to the laws of virtue; and finallyhe must apply himself to understanding the state of human affairs and therepublic in which he finds himself. Because in so far as men live in the world,they live bound to each other in an orderly fashion in a civil society, and haveto observe in this condition not just the duty that binds them to the wholehuman race, but also their duty to the commonwealth in which they live. Theyare incapable of doing both obediently, though, unless they have alreadycleansed their understanding of the common errors and are knowledgeable ofthe society in which they dwell . . . (KTS, )

Aristotelian practical philosophy serves none of these purposes,according to Thomasius. In the first place it is incapable of makingyoung men virtuous and for this reason does not deserve the name ofpractical philosophy. A discipline worthy of the title habitus practici (prac-tical competence) should actually form the capacity for moral action. Itis not enough for this discipline to teach a young person ‘something ofhimself and his nature, [and] how capable these are of understandingthe action in question’. Rather, ‘it is above all necessary that it displaythe means and manner through which a natural ability can be put towork’ (KTS, –). Academic practical philosophy is quite incapable offunctioning in this way. On the one hand – bogged down in disputes overthe summum bonum, taught to youth in the form of metaphysical exercises,proceeding from a cataloguing of the eleven virtues to a classification ofthe species of justice – Aristotelian moral philosophy reduces to a set oftechnical terms and axioms lacking all edifying power: ‘I hope thereforethat I do no injustice to Aristotelian ethics when I say that it is as inca-pable of leading a young man to the path of virtue as a gouty foot is inca-pable of carrying a lame man across a river’ (KTS, ). On the other

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hand, through its mixing of theology and philosophy, Aristotelian meta-physics can claim a cultural authority that threatens the political order,giving birth to such dangerous hybrids as ‘Christian logic’, ‘which has noother use than to show ill-mannered individuals how they can opposethe territorial sovereign under the cover of a hypocritical religiosity’(KTS, ).

As a result, says Thomasius, displaying a characteristic mix of self-promotion, intellectual audacity, and political bravado, he will redressthe defects of Aristotelian moral philosophy by developing an alterna-tive ethics. We will reserve our discussion of Thomasius’ ethical disci-pline for the following section, contenting ourselves for the moment withthe claim through which he signalled its distinguishing feature and sooutraged the ‘old theologian’, namely: ‘That ethics is nothing other thana teaching and instruction in how a man should govern his affects, inorder to render them incapable of impelling him to something thatwould be against the law’ (KTS, ). Thomasius also tells his auditors thathis lectures will clarify the nature of the affects and their relation toreason, and will teach ‘the kind of general rules a man must observe tohold his affects in check’ (KTS, ). In short, Thomasius was proposingto remedy the practical incapacity of Aristotelian moral philosophy withan ethical therapeutics. This discipline would relegate the intellectualistanthropology and quasi-religious discipline of metaphysical ethics infavour of a passional anthropology geared to a practice of self-restraint– an Affektenlehre.

Secondly, argues Thomasius, Aristotelian practical philosophy is noless inappropriate as a means of informing students as to the nature ofthe political state and the duties they owe to it. Here, the important thingis that future jurists and statesmen be instructed on the present post-Westphalian condition of the German Empire, particularly with regardto its relation to the emergent territorial states and their sovereigns. Inusing Roman natural law categories and Aristotle’s typology of state-forms to construe the Empire as a type of state – a respublica mixta – neo-scholastic political theory is completely unsuited to this task. Thisconstrual – maintained, we may observe, by Leibniz and the neoscholas-tic natural jurists – is both empirically inadequate to the Empire’s actualexistence as a federation of states, and politically inappropriate, infavouring a society of Imperial estates over the emergent system of sove-reign territorial states. Displaying his own grounding in Conring’s civilisprudentia and Pufendorf ’s natural law, Thomasius declares that neoscho-lastic political and legal theory must be replaced by the teaching of a newkind of political law or Staatsrecht. This would be a political jurisprudence

The attack on metaphysical scholasticism

informed by ‘Monzambano’s’ (Pufendorf ’s) empirical history of theEmpire’s actually existing political organisation, and oriented to the nowdominant political reality of the sovereign territorial state (KTS, –).

Exemplifying the new historical form of jurisprudence that he soughtto introduce into the university – and in fact anticipating the history ofearly modern jurisprudence given by such modern historians as MartinHeckel – Thomasius argues that German Staatsrecht derives not frommetaphysical concepts of justice common to the sage and God, but froma quite different order of reality: the history of the Reformation, thereligious wars of the sixteenth century, and the Thirty Years War in par-ticular. It was in this context that deconfessionalised political–jurispru-dential principles were gradually assembled, in order to providestatesmen with an agnostic juridical framework capable of containingthe fractious doctrines and passions of the warring confessional estates(KTS, –). Emerging as the instrument of this statist deconfessional-isation of society, the new political jurisprudence was constitutionallydisposed towards the reality of the system of independent sovereignstates established by the Treaty of Westphalia. If, therefore, the risinggeneration of jurists and statesmen were to understand the nature of thestates in which they lived, they would have to have to be taught GermanStaatsrecht. They would also have to master Pufendorf ’s account of theEmpire as a state that was ‘irregular’ or lacking the defining character-istic of the state: supreme sovereignty, or the concentration of all thepowers and capacities necessary for the security of the state and its citi-zens in a single locus of decision and action (KTS, –).

As Notker Hammerstein has shown, Thomasius’ historical approachto the study and teaching of Staatsrecht is representative of a more generalalliance between the disciplines of law and history that was displacingthe deductive framework of metaphysics and Roman law (Hammerstein; Hammerstein ). This transformation played an important rolein Thomasius’ reconstruction of academic practical philosophy. In factThomasius proposes that philosophy or arts faculties should continueteaching ethics, politics, and oeconomics, but in a quite new way. Ratherthan approaching these disciplines through the portals of metaphysics,which led to their being regarded as applied branches of moral philos-ophy, students would be introduced to them via the discipline of history,which allowed the disciplines an eclectic independence. Through thestudy of sacred and profane history, and especially through the study ofthe history of philosophy – the discipline that Thomasius’ father hadcultivated in search of a restraining context for rationalist metaphysics –

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students would learn to approach the different parts of practical philos-ophy in terms of their historical contexts and objectives (KTS, ).History thus began to emerge as the great disciplinary alternative andrival to metaphysics. It did so by treating historical phenomena as empir-ically autonomous, rather than as temporal manifestations of a priori ortheo-rational ideas, thereby playing a decisive role in the detranscenden-talising of philosophy. Situated in the curriculum in this way, the civil sci-ences were no longer to be seen as devolved branches of the theory ofbeing, in either the neoscholastic or Leibnizian manner. Instead, theywere to be taught in the ‘eclectic’ manner, as autonomous historicalundertakings, each with its own methodological conditions and practi-cal ends.

It was against this backdrop that Thomasius could introduce his ver-sions of the main branches of practical philosophy. His ethics, we havenoted, would be one divorced from the metaphysics of intellectual self-governance, grounded in the quasi-biological passions it was meant toshape and control, and oriented to a practical end – inner tranquillity –to be achieved by the discipline (KTS, –). For its part, politics wasto be taught not as a branch of ethics – in terms of the prince’s role inexecuting God’s will, or in terms of the state’s role in perfecting man’smoral nature – but as a discipline for managing the state as an empiri-cal–historical entity. In a manner reminiscent of Arnisaeus and Conring,Thomasius argues that political science should focus on how states aremaintained and what it is that destroys them; the role of different formsof government in realising the sovereign interests of the state; thebenefits and harms of good and bad clergy to the state; the contributionof manufacture and trade, and so on. As a further dimension of thispractical political pedagogy he promises to teach his students a type ofpolitical prudence (politische Klugheit) – providing them with the means tocontrol their emotions and compose their demeanour in threateningpublic circumstances, while simultaneously penetrating the dissimula-tions of others with whom they are conversing or negotiating (KTS,–). Thomasius’ outline of the oeconomics curriculum, though, is farless advanced, reflecting both the limited development of this disciplineand his limited interest in it (KTS, –). Oeconomics is treated partlyin terms of practical advice to the students on the prudent managementof their financial affairs, and partly via the rules of the prince’s ‘state-housekeeping’ (Haushaltungskunst) – conforming to Brückner’s argumentthat economics had not yet emerged as a fully independent disciplinefocused on knowing and managing the national economy (Brückner

The attack on metaphysical scholasticism

, –). Finally, Thomasius proposed to add a fourth discipline topractical philosophy – one for which the German language had no wordbut which the Latins called decorum and the French politesse or galanterie.Introduced as a distinct ethical domain alongside morals (honestum) andlaw (justum), decorum contains the rules for managing conduct that isneither commanded nor forbidden, but is nonetheless necessary for themaintenance of civilised life. The rules of decorum derive from themanners and mores of those persons whose way of living is mostesteemed, the gens du court in particular. Decorum teaches students howto avoid incivility and impudence, to cultivate winning ways andmanners, and to engage in peaceable social intercourse with those whosereligious or moral beliefs they may not share (KTS, ).

The prime casualty of this reconstruction of the philosophical curric-ulum is, of course, the discipline of metaphysics. As the linchpin of phil-osophical confessionalism and the confessional university, neoscholasticmetaphysics is the bête noir of Thomasius’ deconfessionalising pro-gramme. Schulmetaphysik both stationed the civil sciences on the lowerrungs of the ladder of being and compelled university students to accedeto their civil duties via the speculative ascent of this ladder. Thomasius’curricular and pedagogical reforms were thus intended completely todismember university metaphysics – reassigning its ontological role tohistory, relegating its ethics in favour of his Affektenlehre, denying it anyrole in politics, and expelling it from theology – leaving only its carcassto be picked over by logicians in search of useful categories. Thomasiuswould settle for nothing less than the utter destruction of metaphysics,in order to make way for a philosophical propaedeutic that would trainstudents in the ethical discipline required to govern themselves and inthe civil sciences required to govern the state.

Nonetheless, Thomasius’ reform of the arts curriculum was not gov-erned by a simple substitution of social utility for metaphysical truth. Bytreating it in this way, some commentators have sought to explainThomasius’ statism as the product of yet another philosophical error: hissacrifice of transcendental norms capable of judging the state to an all-embracing political utilitarianism (Schmidt-Biggemann a, –). Infact Thomasius’ prime philosophical concern was not the substitution ofutility for truth but a quite different one. He was concerned with theutility – in the broad sense of contributing to ‘human flourishing’ – ofdifferent modes of acceding to truth. In other words, Thomasius’ fun-damental concern was not to defend a true philosophy, but to describeand criticise particular ways of acceding to philosophical truth in terms

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of the intellectual deportments to which they gave rise. In fact, inapproaching philosophy via an historical description of the intellectualdeportments it formed, Thomasius was playing the trump card in hisreconstruction of the arts curriculum: the historicisation of metaphysicsitself. This is the task that he essayed in the Hof-Philosophie of .

.. Historicising metaphysics

Rather than anticipating nineteenth-century utilitarianism, the Hof-Philosophie represents the fusion of two distinctively early modern intel-lectual currents. First, it draws on the historical approach to scholasticmetaphysics developed by Thomasius’ ‘blessed father’ Jacob, in hisSchediasma historicum of . An adherent of the classic Lutherandualism of revealed and natural knowledge, Jacob Thomasius objectedto the rationalist collapsing of this division in (Scotist) Aristotelian meta-physical ontology. For this led to God being treated as a sub-species in ahierarchy of being open to the human intellect, rather than as the‘highest analogum’ for a reality the intellect could not know directly.Thomasius senior sought to rectify this error by providing a history of it(Santinello , –). Tracing its origins to the Chaldean and early-Greek dualisms of God and matter, good and evil, Jacob viewed the phil-osophical ‘sects’ – Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic, Epicurean – as attemptsto reconcile the dualisms, treating neoscholastic metaphysical ontologyas the most recent such attempt. In a footnote to the Institutiones, the sonenumerates the errors which his father had discerned in the neoscholas-tic metaphysicians:

They err when they make intelligence into a species of theoretical disposition[habituum theoreticorum], which happens because they concern themselves toolittle with practical principles. They err in confusing ontology with metaphys-ics. [They err] In excising the theory of God from metaphysics, shifting it to aspecial discipline, namely pneumatology. [They err] In presenting their modernmetaphysics as wisdom, because it is nothing more than a dictionary of variousterms, which either has no uses or else very bad ones. [They err] In that, inpneumatology, they treat of angels and of human souls separated from the body. . . They err when they treat the moral disposition [habitus morali] or moral virtue[virtute morali] as if it were indistinguishable from a free disposition [wilkührlichenhabitu] and once again the forget the art [the ars ethica]. (IJD, .., fn ‘r’, )

At the same time, the Hof-Philosophie is also informed by the kind ofanti-metaphysical civil philosophy to be found in Renaissance civichumanists such as Mario Nizoli(us) (Dreitzel , –). This current

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of civil philosophy combined a nominalist rejection of universals andmetaphysical abstraction with an empiricist epistemology, framing bothwithin a rhetorical conception of logic and language as instruments ofcivil communication (Nizolius ). In fusing his father’s anti-sectarianhistory of metaphysical ontology and the Renaissance ‘civic–nominal-ist’ critique of metaphysics, Thomasius’ Hof-Philosophie emerged as apowerful anti-metaphysical tract. By focusing on its sectarian merging oftheology and philosophy, Thomasius was able to diagnose universitymetaphysics as a danger to both private piety and public civility.

Thomasius begins the Hof-Philosophie with a history of philosophywhose central function is to provide a genealogy of the contemporarystruggle between the neoscholastic philosophia Christiana and the eclecticcivil philosophy of Grotius and Pufendorf (Hochstrasser , –).Following closely in his father’s footsteps, Thomasius characterisespagan philosophy in terms of its erroneous treatment of God and theworld, and good and evil, as co-eval principles (EHP, –). Not onlydoes this doctrine mark pagan philosophy’s difference from Christianmonotheism, it also indicates the original miscegenation of theology andphilosophy whose offspring was ‘sectarian philosophy’. Defined byopposition to eclectic philosophy, sectarian philosophy signifies an ille-gitimate natural (philosophical) appropriation of revealed (theological)truths, giving rise to intellectual authoritarianism, discipleship, and intol-erance of other philosophies. Thomasius’ history of philosophy is thusnot so much a history of ideas as a history of philosophical sectarianismas a particular way of acceding to ideas.

Without attempting to capture the detail of this history we canobserve that Thomasius identifies the patristic period as the moment atwhich pagan (Stoic and Platonic) philosophical sectarianism penetratedChristian theology. It is the Platonising fathers in particular – Origen,Chrysostom, Augustine – who are held chiefly responsible for this cross-breeding, giving birth to the hybrid discipline of metaphysics and, withit, the type of sectarian speculative theology that has brought great dis-turbance to religion and civil society (EHP, –). Transmitted to themiddle ages in the form of the great scholastic systems, this sectarianphilosophy has given rise to such recent forms as the ‘papist’ Aristotelianmoral philosophy that mixes theology, philosophy, and Roman jurispru-dence in misshapen texts that purport to discuss justice and law (EHP,–). It was against this intolerant confessional philosophy that theexcellent Hobbes entered the field in England. But it is Grotius andPufendorf – those ‘two heroic men’ – who have led the renewal of moral

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

philosophy. In grounding natural law in man’s need for a sociable life inthis world – rather than in his supposed insight into divine ideas – theyhave paved the way for a restrained and non-sectarian eclectic philoso-phy (EHP, –). Here we can see an early sketch of the history ofnatural law that would inform the Foreword to Grotius.

Thomasius’ history of philosophy is thus one that identifies scholasticmetaphysics as the key modern form sectarian philosophy, characteris-ing it in terms of an undesirable spiritual and civil comportment. Thisis the dogmatic zeal that arises when matters of faith are espoused in theform of philosophically demonstrable doctrines, requiring adherence tothe truth of a particular master or sect: ‘Experience and history bothteach that this sectarian philosophy . . . has provided innumerable occa-sions for great disturbance in the church and the state’ (EHP, ). For itspart, eclectic philosophy is also advocated principally as a mode of intel-lectual conduct, rather than as a doctrine or theory. This mode,however, is grounded in a confession of the limits of human intellect,which prevents us from treating any philosophy as the absolute truth. Ittakes place as a restrained exercise of the freedom to choose amongvarious philosophies in accordance with the benefits they bring to manand the commonwealth (EHP, –).

Having constructed the history of philosophy as a history of sects,Thomasius proceeds to historicise the concept of philosophy itself (EHP,–). He begins by noting the variety of meanings given to the term.Some have used it to refer to all wisdom no matter what its principles,including revealed theology. Others, though, have defined it in opposi-tion to theology, restricting it to knowledge gained via natural reason.Some, defining it in opposition to law and medicine, have identified phi-losophy with the arts. Yet others, though, have restricted it to the liberalarts alone. Finally, those who oppose philosophy to logic or mathemat-ics do so in order to identify it with metaphysics or theology. Adheringto this last meaning, the Platonic and Aristotelian sects and their neo-scholastic heirs have attempted to make metaphysics into the essentialform of philosophy, construing it as the ‘art of arts’ and ‘science of sci-ences’, but only by treating it as the means of acceding to divine beingor ‘being as being’. This only displays the sectarian confusion of theol-ogy and philosophy in their teachings (EHP, –).

Thomasius uses the multiple meanings of philosophy to justify itsoperational construal – as the discipline taught under this name in ‘ouracademies’ – thereby defining it in opposition to law, medicine, andtheology and treating it as inclusive of the liberal arts (EHP, ). He then

The attack on metaphysical scholasticism

proceeds to configure this empirically defined field via a series of theo-retical and methodological distinctions. Theology is distinguished fromthe other academic sciences both by its end – eternal felicity as opposedto civil welfare – and by its mode of cognition: revelation as distinct fromnatural knowledge. Philosophy is, then, distinguished from the other‘rational’ sciences of medicine and (natural) jurisprudence, as they haveautonomous ends – the health of the body and the soul – whereas phi-losophy is contributory to these ends and is hence an instrumentalscience (EHP, ). This allows Thomasius to characterise philosophy as:‘that intellectual and instrumental disposition [habitus intellectualis undinstrumentalis] which considers God, his creatures, and the natural andmoral conduct of men in the light of reason, and which investigates thecauses of their conduct for the benefit of the human race’ (EHP, ).

If his history of philosophy is intended to show the temporal originsof scholastic sectarianism, then Thomasius’ methodological demarca-tion of philosophy is meant to reveal the intellectual grounds of thisundesirable deportment. As in the later Foreword to Grotius, Thomasiuslocates these grounds in the mixing of two fundamentally distinct prin-ciples of cognition – revealed and natural knowledge – which is reflectedin the alliance between the theology and philosophy faculties in the con-fessional university. This mixing takes two forms: ‘When arguments forthings whose knowledge depends on the light of nature are derivedinstead from the principle of revelation’, and, ‘When arguments for thesecrets of faith are drawn from the principles of reason’ (EHP, ).Scholastic theology must bear the blame for the latter confusion, whichhas been the cause of ‘the many religious troubles which have continuedfrom the beginning of scholastic theology until our time’ (EHP, ).University metaphysics, though, must take responsibility for the formerwhich, although not as harmful, has nonetheless blurred the bordersbetween philosophy and theology. This has given rise to the monstrosityof a ‘Christian philosophy’, characterised precisely by the attempt toderive philosophical doctrines from revealed truths or to elucidate thelatter using philosophical means. These attempts have produced suchhybrids as the metaphysical distinction between essence and existence –the notion that dogness exists independently of dogs – ‘which does notcome from the Holy Ghost’. Further, they have led to such monstrositiesas a ‘Christian physics’ and a ‘Christian ethics’, the former purportingto explain the common creation of matter, the latter original sin, both ofwhich are matters of faith not reason (EHP, –).

Having shown the historical consequences of the sectarian mixing of

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

philosophy and theology, and argued the need to confine philosophy tothe ends of man’s worldly happiness, Thomasius notes the broad con-tours of his delimitation of the philosophical domain:

With the description of philosophy I have signalled that its end is the flourishingof the human race: that is, temporal happiness. Through this description, first,philosophy will again be separated from theology and, second, it will be deniedthat the final end of theoretical philosophy is aimed at a pure contemplation –because [theoretical philosophy] must also be rendered subordinate to thoseactivities that reach [only] to the flourishing of the human race, which Senecahad already recognised in his time. (EHP, –)

Despite Thomasius’ comment that the princes themselves have decreedthe separation of philosophy and theology, this delimitation does notmean that he is proposing the state control of philosophy in the interestsof social welfare; for he argues that academic work should be free ofpolitical control, to the extent that it does not jeopardise civil peace.

In fact, through his history of philosophical sectarianism and hisaccount of the confusion of revealed and natural principles of knowl-edge in scholasticism, Thomasius was attempting to achieve a desacral-isation of philosophy analogous to Pufendorf ’s secularisation of naturallaw. He uses the end of worldly happiness to exclude contemplation ofpure truth from civil philosophy, in the same way that Pufendorf usesworldly security to exclude the theo-rational contemplation of purejustice from civil jurisprudence – although, apparently, with less success.Thomasius’ aim is thus not to teach a true philosophy backed by the state,for that would be more philosophical sectarianism. Rather, it is to trans-form the manner in which intellectuals would accede to philosophicaltruth. Thomasius uses his history of philosophical sectarianism to revealthe relation between philosophical doctrine and intellectual deportment.Then he establishes the horizon of civil happiness in order to repudiatethose doctrines and deportments which purport to transcend thishorizon through access to a pure contemplative truth shared with God.

This is the manner in which Thomasius approaches neoscholastic andCartesian metaphysics in the Hof-Philosophie, discussing their anthropol-ogies, conceptions of truth, and logical doctrines in terms of his historyof philosophical sectarianism and his desacralising separation of philos-ophy from theology. Without attempting to capture the detail of this dis-cussion, we can observe that Thomasius’ overall endeavour is to replacethe Platonised Aristotelianism of rationalist metaphysics with a natura-listic anthropology of the passions and an eclectic mix of humanist logicand Stoic epistemology.

The attack on metaphysical scholasticism

In the domain of anthropology, for example, he rejects the privilegingof the intellect entailed in Platonic and Aristotelian teaching that, as afragment of the divine intellect, the human soul consists in thought andcontrols the body through reason (EHP, –). The Christianising ofthis doctrine by the neoscholastics – who treat the body as that which dis-tinguishes men from intellectual angels – only compounds the originalpagan mixing of theology and philosophy, by drawing philosophicalconclusions from Scripture. According to Thomasius, Descartes’ con-ception of the mind as an incorporeal ‘thinking substance’ derives fromthe same sectarian sources. Moreover, he criticises Descartes’ use ofradical doubt as a means of demonstrating this conception, arguing thatit is impossible to exclude reference to the body in accounting for thought(EHP, –). In place of this intellectualist anthropology, Thomasiussketches a civil Epicurean one. Here, the soul (Gemüth) is embedded in thebody by the sensory pathways that are the cause of thought, and it is tiedto society by language, whose propositional schemata organise thoughtin a form suited to civil communication (EHP, ff ). Logic thus has norelation to ontology and should be treated rather as an instrument forteaching ‘prudence in thought’, by tying rational judgment to the socialcommunication of this judgment (EHP, –). Similarly Thomasiusrejects the ‘pagan’ (neo-Platonic) conception of truth as the soul’s partic-ipation in divine intellection of the forms, or recovery of the ideas it pos-sessed prior to its descent into the body. In its place he defends aEpicurean-Stoic and Eclectic conception of truth as the correspondencebetween the soul’s propositional schemata and the empirical states ofaffairs conveyed through the senses (EHP, –). We can also observethat he rejects Descartes’ attempt to derive the immortality of the soulfrom the incorporeality of its substance, treating this as a misguidedattempt to provide a philosophical proof for a matter of faith (EHP, ).

In rejecting the anthropology, logic, and epistemology of both neo-scholastic and Cartesian metaphysics, Thomasius was engaged in anundertaking far more consequential than a dispute within academic phi-losophy. Through his history of philosophical sectarianism and his anal-ysis of the blurring of philosophical and theological modes ofknowledge, Thomasius was attempting to reshape academic philosophyas a whole, from the viewpoint of its role in an emergent deconfession-alised state and civil society. His interventions are thus focused not in dis-puting particular truths, but on transforming the formative disciplinesand institutional order within which truths were configured and accededto.

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

Thomasius’ Hof-Philosophie is thus intended to forestall the integrationof academic disciplines into a metaphysical hierarchy, and to destroy thepedagogy that saw students acceding to their civil sciences and dutiesthrough the contemplative ascent of this hierarchy. Only through such afundamental dismemberment of the neoscholastic curriculum would itbe possible to eliminate the metaphysical assimilation of the civil sciencesto moral philosophy. This would allow politics and jurisprudence to standas independent historically based disciplines, and it would reduce philos-ophy to the status of a preparatory training in the liberal arts. Withoutthis radical detranscendentalising of philosophy, Thomasius argues, thedeconfessionalisation of society could not take place. For the state’sfuture jurists and politicians would be corrupted by a discipline thattempted them to orient their duties and decisions to an horizon that laybeyond civil happiness and, in doing so, denied them the restrained andpragmatic demeanour required by their civil office. If this desacralisingof philosophy were to succeed, therefore, the students would have to beprovided with an alternative to the intellectualist ethos that sutured themto the neoscholastic curriculum and, through it, to confessional society.Thomasius sought to provide this alternative in the form of a therapeu-tic for the passions.

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We recall the brash manner in which Thomasius announced his ethicalprogramme at the University of Leipzig in the late s, upbraidingAristotelian moral philosophy for its failure to make young men virtu-ous, and promising to remedy this defect via a lecture series based on thispremise: ‘That ethics is nothing other than a teaching and instruction inhow a man should govern his affects, in order to render them incapableof impelling him to something that would be against the law’ (KTS, ).In the event, Thomasius’ forced departure from the Lutheran Universityof Leipzig, engineered by his scholastic opponents, meant that this ethicswas elaborated at the University of Halle in Mark Brandenburg, whoseCalvinist ruling house was more open to non-orthodox ethical and polit-ical doctrine. This was the setting in which Thomasius published theEinleitung zu der Sittenlehre (Introduction to Ethics, ) and Ausübung derSittenlehre (Practice of Ethics, ). Despite their respective titles, theAusübung represents less the application of the Einleitung’s moral theorythan its supersession, on the grounds of its unsuitability for sustaining anethical practice. Here, therefore, I will be concentrating on the Ausübung,

Detranscendentalising ethics

as the ‘mature’ formulation of Thomasius’ Affektenlehre which, as we shallsee in the following section, fed directly into his late natural law doctrine.

In the running commentary on the Einleitung that accompanies theopening chapters of the Ausübung, Thomasius locates the defects of hisearlier work in its account of the relation between reason and the will.When writing the Einleitung, says Thomasius, he had accepted thecommon doctrine of the moral philosophers: namely, that bad conductis the product of the reason presenting erroneous ideas of good and evilto the will, which then acts on them. Now, though, he wishes to treat thewill as the more powerful of the two capacities of the soul. In possessingits own fundamental predispositions – to prestigious imitation andimpulsive action – it is the will that determines the disposition of reason,giving rise to conduct uncontrollable by reason (ASL, –). The reasonfor this change of view lay in Thomasius’ acceptance of the doctrine thatman is a fundamentally passional rather than rational creature, actingnot on the basis of ideas of good and evil, but driven by ‘love’, or thedesire to obtain future pleasure or avoid threatening pain. If Pufendorfhad sought to detranscendentalise ethics through his doctrine ofimposed moral offices, then Thomasius would locate man’s incapacityfor rational self-governance elsewhere – in the autarchy of the passions.

Thomasius thus signalled his departure from all forms of rationalistmoral philosophy; that is, all doctrines in which reason governs the willthrough its discernment of the ideas of good and evil. Committinghimself instead to a thoroughgoing ethical voluntarism, he locates thedifference between good and evil within the passional configuration ofthe will itself, in the form of the difference between two kinds of desire,vernünftige and unvernünftige Liebe. These terms are sometimes translatedas rational and irrational love, but are perhaps better rendered as rea-sonable and unreasonable love, in order to capture Thomasius’ basicfocus on the difference between tempered and unrestrained desire. Fromreasonable love flows tranquillity of soul or peace of mind (Gemütsruhe),the end of Thomasius’ ethic and the source of all virtues; from unrea-sonable love, turbulence of soul, the source of all vices.

From now on let us therefore look for the origin of all errors and all misery inthe human will, so to speak. We will find it there immediately, in the simplestmanner, because all truth is simple. Tranquillity of soul is the greatest happi-ness and its mother and daughter are reasonable love . . .

Why should we hesitate [to say it]? The well-spring of all good is love. Thewell-spring of all misery is love. Be he composed as he will, a man cannot bewithout love for a moment, because there is no moment in which a man doesnot wish for something as good, or desire and wish its continuation.

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

But these two loves must possess different, in fact contradictory, natures,because they cause such contradictory effects. The well-spring of all good is rea-sonable love, so the well-spring of all evil must be unreasonable love. And hereyou have the origin of universal unhappiness, unreasonable love. In fact hereyou have universal unhappiness itself: namely, disturbance of the soul. (ASL,–)

Despite its affiliation to Stoic ataraxia, Thomasius’ Gemütsruhe is not ana-social condition characterised by indifference to and withdrawal fromworldly desires. In fact, the peace of mind achieved through reasonablelove holds the key to tranquil relations with others, making it into therepository of the sociable virtues – friendliness, truthfulness, modesty,peaceableness, and patience – to which the individual accedes throughrestraint, purity, industriousness, and courage (ASL, –). Conversely, themental agitation arising from the uncontrolled desires of unreasonablelove is the mother of all the social vices – ferocity, vengefulness, licence,envy, and malice – making it into the source of social disorder.

Arguing that without an account of the affects it is impossible for ateacher to help his students diagnose and restrain their ruling passions,Thomasius comments that this is a neglected and uncertain area, appar-ently combining medical therapy, moral philosophy, and rhetoric (ASL,–). This situation is not helped by the existence of several doctrinesof the passions, all differing over a series of basic questions: what shouldbe included in a typology of the affects; whether the affects are good,evil, or indifferent; whether they can be expunged or merely restrained;whether man shares them with the beasts (ASL, ). Thomasius then pro-ceeds to develop his Affektenlehre via a comprehensive discussion of themain doctrines of the passions – Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean,and Cartesian. His prime targets, however, are Descartes’ account of the‘passions of the soul’ and the Christian–Platonic treatment of the body–soul relation in neoscholastic pneumatology; for these were the centralacademic sources of the intellectualist moral anthropology that his pas-sional anthropology was dedicated to combating.

It is generally agreed, says Thomasius, that affects consist in move-ments of the soul, be these inclinations (actions) or reactions (passions).Descartes, though, lodges these affects in the understanding rather thanthe will, which seems paradoxical when one considers such affects aslove, fear, and hope. The prime reason for Descartes’ intellectualist treat-ment of the affects lies in his treatment of wonder as an affect, in fact asthe fundamental affect, occurring prior to the distinction between goodand evil, and grounding all the other affects in a fundamental feeling ofastonishment at things not yet known (ASL, ). This leads Descartes to

Detranscendentalising ethics

treat the understanding as the seat of a self-generated affect – wonder –which, as both a cognition and a feeling, is also a disposition of the will,arousing desire and action. In proceeding in this manner, Thomasiusargues, Descartes fails to distinguish thinking something from willing itor, more generally, the actions and passions of the understanding whichhave their seat in the brain, from those of the will, which are seated inthe heart:

From this consideration though it necessarily follows that the action and passionof the will differs by nature from human thought. Hence when Descartes saysHomo dum vult, cogitat – man thinks when he wills something – he is right in sofar as thinking and willing are unified in the human soul . . . but not when hejoins other philosophers in proposing that willing and thinking are a singlething, or more precisely: that willing consists in thinking. Because thinkingbelongs only to the understanding. (ASL, –)

Descartes is therefore wrong to make thought into the essential charac-teristic that distinguishes man from animals: ‘Because the inclinationand drive of the will is a much nobler power of the human soul than thethinking of the understanding, in which form however [the will] is gen-erally completely overlooked by the pagan philosophers and their follow-ers in the universities, or else [it is] mixed with the understanding and itsthinking’ (ASL, ).

Despite his claim to superior scientific knowledge of the brain andheart – seats of the understanding and will – Thomasius’ constantconcern throughout his discussion of intellectualist anthropology is notwith its truth or falsity as such, but with the intellectual deportment towhich it gives shape. He thus argues that while wonder is a demeanoursuited to undertaking intellectual inquiry, it should not be treated as theessential human affect, thereby representing man as a being who governshimself and lives his life through reason (ASL, ). Any philosophicalanthropology that does this – including that in his own Einleitung zurVernünft-Lehre – is suited only to the improvement of the understanding,not to the governance of man’s moral conduct (ASL, –).

While Thomasius spends a good deal of energy attacking Descartes’moral psychology in these terms, his prime target remains the neoscho-lastic – Christian–Platonic and Christian–Stoic – doctrines that locatethe affects in the body by opposing them to the mind or spirit. As we havealready observed, Thomasius’ opposition to the metaphysical anthropol-ogy of homo duplex is also grounded in his analysis of the kind of relationto the self to which it gives rise. By treating them as corporeal drivescommon to men and beasts, and by opposing them to a capacity for

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

rational self-control lodged in man’s intellectual or spiritual substance,this intellectualist anthropology characterises the affects as intrinsicallyevil, marking them out for complete eradication through rational con-templation of the good (ASL, –). Not only is this way of relating tothe self vain and fantasmatic, it results in an inappropriate ‘monkish’civil demeanour. By the same token, Thomasius’ construction of a ‘nat-uralistic’ anthropology of the passions is also governed by the end ofdeportment-formation. If Thomasius opposes the neoscholastic view ofthe affects as the fleshly source of evil, treating them instead as morallyindifferent, that is because he is programming a different way of relatingto the self, aimed at forming a different kind of intellectual demeanour.

This is the appropriate light in which to view Thomasius’ doctrinethat such affects as anger, patience, fear, and courage arise in part fromthe sensory stimulation of the blood and brain fibres, and in part fromthe ruling passion or temperament of the individual who receives thesestimuli. The final shape of the affects is thus determined by whether theperson’s temperament is governed by reasonable love or by one of thethree unreasonable loves or ruling passions: ambition (Ehrgeiz), concupis-cence (Wollust), or avarice (Geldgeiz) (ASL, –). Here, rather thanattempting to offer a ‘scientific’ or naturalistic explanation of morality,Thomasius is providing a voluntaristic means of detranscendentalisingits culture. If the affects arise in man’s nature as a passional being, theycan be neither good nor evil in themselves, acquiring their moral char-acter instead depending on whether they give rise to tranquillity and thesociable virtues or agitation and the unsociable vices: ‘From this itfollows, though, that the inclinations of the soul in general are indifferent– that is, neither good nor evil – with regard to their kinds, but are eithergood in so far as they lead us to tranquillity or evil in so far as they leadus to disturbance’ (ASL, ). By positing the moral indifference of theaffects, Thomasius detaches ethics from all concern with the soul’stranscendent goodness or evil, allowing it to be reconfigured as a disci-pline for managing ‘external’ conduct in civil life. This, as the ‘old the-ologian’ noted with disgust, gives rise to a less purist and less Christianethics, for ‘the utterly un-Christian statists and atheists are capable ofthis [management] in a quite masterly way’ (KTS, ).

The immediate objective of Thomasius’ detranscendentalisingreconstruction of ethics was to transform the manner in which thoseundergoing academic moral education would relate to and cultivatetheir moral selves. Thomasius’ passional anthropology forms the core ofa paideia designed to impel students to renounce the ‘rationalist’ sense of

Detranscendentalising ethics

themselves as intellectual beings capable of governing themselvesthrough a supranatural thinking of pure ideas. The condition ofThomasius’ students adopting the proper moral relation to themselvesis that they begin by recognising themselves as beings whose conduct isirretrievably governed by some combination of ambition, lust, andgreed; for only then can they renounce all false intellectual pride andaccept the need for constant monitoring and restraint of their desires inaccordance with the ends of personal and civil tranquillity.

At the same time, this Epicurean anthropology also programmes thespiritual exercises required to form a self capable of governing itsconduct in this manner. If conduct is driven by the passional con-figuration of the will, then it is vain to propose the complete extirpationof the affects through contemplative exercises in intellectual self-purification aimed at rational autonomy. Rather, the task of ethical dis-cipline must be to dampen and moderate the affects. The violentpassions will be restrained not through sudden rational insight into theidea of the good, but through the gradual and constant moderation ofthe desires for honour, pleasure, and wealth, with a view to arriving atthe tranquil, sociable desire of reasonable love:

This [disturbed] condition of man is certainly very evil. If he does not wish toruin his nature though, his return from these agitated and extraordinary move-ments [of the soul] to calm and orderly ones can only be attained through aseries of steps. Someone suffering from gout will only gradually regain the useof his limbs. And someone who has been dazzled will only be the more so bynormal light, unless he is exposed to it by degrees. It is therefore necessary thatone passes from extraordinary and agitated movements of the soul to peacefulones via less agitated ones. (ASL, –)

Finally, through this anthropology Thomasius also separates theethical self-cultivation of reasonable love from the (Christian–Platonic)pursuit of salvation. Here, as Thomas Ahnert shows, Thomasius lockedhorns with those neoscholastics like Johann Ludwig Prasch, who positeda continuum between reasonable love and the Christian love that liftsman from his corrupt state (Ahnert , –). By accepting theircorrupt state and renouncing the self-purifying ascent to the contempla-tion of pure goodness and justice, Thomasius’ students would beimpelled to seek a more modest and useful object for their ethical labour.Through recognition of themselves as creatures whose ambition, lust,and greed are ineradicable – hence in constant need of monitoring andrestraint – they would forgo the vain pursuit of rational autonomy and

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

gear their ethical striving instead to the cultivation of a worldly civilityand tolerance. This was the deportment suited to their offices as servantsand citizens of a desacralised state. From now on moral philosophycould aspire to be nothing higher than a governance of the passionsthrough the passions, to be achieved through naturalistic recognition oftheir tranquil and agitated states, thereby setting ethics within the limitsof this-worldly civil conduct.

Seen in this context, Thomasius’ abrupt turn from the ethics of self-restraint to the theology of grace in the final chapter of the Ausübungwould appear to be anomalous. Historians of moral philosophy haveseized on this apparent about-face as indicative of the philosophicalinadequacy of Thomasius’ supposed attempt to provide a voluntaristicand naturalistic justification for morality. Mixing their own normativeanalysis of Thomasius’ philosophical failure with biographical anec-dotes of his ‘pietistic crisis’ of the mid-s, these historians treat thefideistic turn of the final chapter as symptomatic of Thomasius’ allegedfailure to provide a properly rational foundation for his ethics. In WernerSchneiders’ formulation: ‘Because Thomasius . . . had further developeda voluntarism that proclaimed the priority of the will over the under-standing and the dependence of the understanding on the will, he foundhimself confronted, through disillusioning personal experience, by theaporia that thought ruled by an evil will must be incapable of recognis-ing its own evil and the true good, and, through this knowledge, improv-ing the will’ (Schneiders , n.p.). According to Schneiders, thisintellectual and personal crisis was responsible for Thomasius’ turn tothe Pietist doctrine of divine grace at the end of the Ausübung, in a des-perate effort to compensate for man’s incapacity to improve his own willon the basis of rational insight into the good.

Once again, however, approaching early modern civil philosophyfrom a post-Kantian perspective leads to a serious misunderstanding ofthe form in which Thomasius detranscendentalises ethics and the histor-ical circumstances in which he did so. At one level, it is evidently not truethat Thomasius’ elevation of the will over reason left him incapable ofrecognising good and evil and, thereby, of improving the will. After all,we have just seen him teaching his students that those affects are evil thatlead a person away from inner tranquillity and sociable relations with hisfellows, while those are good that lead toward this tranquillity and soci-ability (ASL, –). Moreover, elsewhere in the Ausübung, Thomasiusconverts this rule into an elaborate diagnostic grid, laying out the various

Detranscendentalising ethics

combinations of the ruling passions and their accompanying vices, inorder to equip his students with the means of recognising and moderat-ing their own bad desires (ASL, –).

This, of course, is not the level of analysis with which today’s moralphilosophers are concerned. For them Thomasius’ failure arises from hisalleged inability to offer a formal or theoretical justification for the goalsof personal and civil tranquillity that underpin his ethics. This would bethe kind of justification that Kant offers, when he insists on the neces-sity of finding a principle whose goodness resides not in the ends towhich it leads – because then we must seek the goodness of these endsad infinitum – but in merely being beheld. It should already be clear,however, that Thomasius cannot fail to discover this kind of justificationbecause he is actively not seeking such. As is signalled in the Ausübung’ssubtitle – ‘On the therapy [Arzenei] for unreasonable love and the self-knowledge required by it’ – Thomasius’ objective is to provide his stu-dents with a moral therapy rather than a moral theory. His aim is not toteach them how to provide a speculative justification for the goodness ofpersonal tranquillity and civility. Rather, it is to equip them with anethical regimen through which they could conduct themselves in aserene and civil manner, thereby transforming the ethics seminar intothe locus for a practice of secular spiritual direction or psychotherapy.As Schneiders himself comments: ‘Generally speaking, the goal of thetheory of affects was the transformation of man through the regulationor mastery of these affects’ (Schneiders , ).

Thomasius’ Affektenlehre is thus not an ethical practice lacking a formaltheorisation of the good. Rather, it is an ethical culture that regards suchformal theorisation as symptomatic of an alternative and undesirablekind of ethical culture: one that purports to govern the self through con-templative access to the concept of the good, but that gives rise to anuncivil intellectualism. Like Pufendorf ’s description of man’s denudedand vulnerable natural condition, Thomasius’ account of this creature’svolatile affect-driven nature is presented not as an object of theoreticalreflection but as an occasion for chastened recognition. In this setting itwould be idle to enter into a theoretical dispute over the validity ofThomasius’ presentation of evil in terms of the uncontrolled desires forhonour, sensuous pleasure, and wealth. For the function of this presen-tation is to induct his students into a particular way of relating to andconducting themselves: namely, as beings whose ruling passions requireconstant monitoring and control in order to attain the inner restraint

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

required by public civility. Dorothee Kimmich argues that Thomasius’Epicurean anthropology and cosmology are intended to encourage indi-viduals to turn away from the pursuit of higher knowledge in order tocultivate a self capable of meeting life’s blows and vicissitudes with innercalm and fortitude (Kimmich , –). Thomasius’ developmentof a voluntarist Affektenlehre is indicative not of his failure to offer a formaltheorisation of the good, but of his self-conscious rejection of the intel-lectualist anthropology and demeanour involved in such theorisation,and of his turn to an ethics of self-care and self-control.

The abrupt shift to the fideistic theology of grace and moral rebirththat occurs in the last chapter of the Ausübung is thus not a symptom ofa desperate attempt by Thomasius to compensate for his lack of a formaltheory of morality. Rather, in its very abruptness, it signifies his way ofconstructing the relation between the naturalistic ethics that he has elab-orated in the body of the Ausübung, and the salvation that he expects hisstudents to pursue in a different place and capacity. Once againThomasius’ target is the rationalist moral philosophy taught in the uni-versities. For, he argues, despite Luther’s teaching on the enslavement ofthe will to the affects, and on the need for grace to achieve moral reno-vation, Protestant theology and philosophy faculties have continued toharbor the ‘papist’ doctrine that man might become regenerate throughmoral philosophy itself:

So I believe that one could clearly show how, in the moral philosophy of bothkinds of Protestant university [Lutheran and Calvinist] . . ., students are taughtsuch principles – regarding the sufficiency of the natural capacities for theattainment of a virtuous life – as allow if not a gross then at least a subtle papismto take root in their hearts. After this they use the natural and sharp-tonguedpride in their subtlety for nothing other than to gloss over themselves and theirdoctrines with many quibbling explanations, while damning others whom theyaccuse of heresy. From this it comes about that one in fact writes and disputesagainst Spinozism, Stoicism and Pelagianism, throwing around the charge ofheresy – in other words making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes toothers’ opinions but remaining unaware of the beam in one’s own eye. (ASL,–)

Thomasius leaves us in no doubt that in his view this speculative andintolerant blurring of ethics and theology arises from the intellectualistdoctrines of Cartesian and Aristotelian moral philosophy taught inProtestant universities. In giving reason command over the will, this phi-losophy ridiculously overestimates man’s capacity for autonomous

Detranscendentalising ethics

action, such that: ‘in the process of human conduct the will sits as if ona throne, and after consigning the sensuous desires to evil, while preserv-ing reason from that fate, always determines itself to good or evilthrough free choice’ (ASL, ).

Thomasius responds to this overestimation of man’s moral autonomywith two counter-pointed observations. On the one hand, he argues:‘that the natural capacity of a man to restrain his desire is very poor andlimited, therefore quite unable to remove man from his disturbed stateand bring him to the true happiness of spiritual tranquillity and reason-able love’. On the other hand, however, this does not mean that oneshould despair of the more modest programme of ethical restraint thathe has just outlined: ‘nonetheless, the reasonable propositions regardingthe moderation of the affects given in the preceding chapters [of theAusübung] must not be completely lost sight of ’ (ASL, ). This is thecontext in which Thomasius introduces his argument regardingthe incapacity of the affect-driven will to know and govern its own evil,formulating it in a manner virtually identical to Schneiders’ later criti-cism: ‘We have extensively shown above that with man the will rules theunderstanding, not the understanding the will. And because that whichrules in his will is evil, and yet the understanding takes it for good, howcan the understanding obtain the powers to stigmatise its ruling natureand hold it for bad? From where will it derive the attention to noticethis?’ (ASL, ). The purpose of this argument, though, is not to destroythe anthropological basis of his Affektenlehre, which Thomasius continuesto regard as appropriate for natural or philosophical ethics. Instead, it isto show the inadequacy of philosophical knowledge as such for theprocess of moral regeneration or the attainment of salvation; for theselie beyond man’s natural reason and will in the domain of revelation,faith, and grace.

Rather than reflecting a personal epistemological crisis precipitated byhis passional voluntarism, Thomasius’ use of the doctrine of man’smoral and intellectual incapacity thus represents a self-conscious intel-lectual strategy. Its purpose is to effect the radical separation of philo-sophical ethics and moral theology, in fact creating a gulf between ethicalself-cultivation and the pursuit of holiness that would defy all attempts tobridge it via intellectualist metaphysics. In short, at the conclusion of theAusübung, Thomasius uses the incapacity doctrine to preclude philosoph-ical or natural theological pursuit of salvation, thereby establishing theborder between his student’s civil and religious deportments:

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Now when the man who is stuck in his misery, and recognises that he is inca-pable of practising the means [of ethical restraint] given in the preceding chap-ters . . . becomes ever more really convinced of his misery and incapacity, thenone might easily think that he would find little pleasure in that but must neces-sarily become downcast, and that philosophy or moral philosophy could notcomfort him. But this shows all the better that one must not hold the proposi-tions of the preceding chapters in contempt. Because they show us how thehuman affects should be restrained, even if at the same time leading us to seethat this could not occur through our natural capacity, but that we must wait forthis capacity and for the consolation of our sadness from a higher and holierscience . . . Where, then, moral philosophy runs out, there divine wisdom sup-plies its lacks and defects. Moral philosophy goes no further than to allow manto recognise his bestial condition, and to lead him from there to the conditionof humanity. How, though, he should be led from humanity and mere reasonto true Christianity, that is shown by the Holy Scriptures with the help of divinegrace. (ASL, –)

Thomasius’ Affektenlehre may thus be regarded as a paideia designed toforestall the pursuit of salvation through metaphysical moral philosophy,replacing this with a therapeutics of passional restraint oriented to per-sonal tranquillity and civil peace. In keeping with his role as a pedagogueand his campaign to overturn the scholastic curriculum, Thomasiusdeveloped his Affektenlehre in order to augment Pufendorf ’s magisterialdestruction of Christian moral personalism. He sought a paideia thatmight combat the enculturating power of Protestant scholasticism, whileyet delivering the pluralisation of offices required by Pufendorf ’s decon-fessionalising programme. In the Ausübung this is achieved by the civilvoluntarism of the ethical therapeutic – which required Thomasius’ stu-dents to engage in a discipline of self-restraint reaching no higher thaninner calm and outer decorum – supplemented by the fideist voluntar-ism of the final chapter. Between them, the two voluntarisms shatter themetaphysical continuum between civil ethics and religious morality, bytreating civility and salvation as the ends of two distinct personae – theman and the Christian.

In dissolving the intellectualist moral philosophy responsible for uni-fying the theological and civil sciences, Thomasius’ Affektenlehre explodesthe unified treatment of religion, ethics and political jurisprudence thatcharacterised the metaphysics and pedagogy of Protestant scholasti-cism. The discipline through which Thomasius sought to reconfigure therelations between these domains, in a manner suited to a deconfession-alised civil society, was natural law. In the elaboration of his natural law,

Detranscendentalising ethics

however, Thomasius’ Affektenlehre would turn out to be a mixed blessing.For, while it offered law students access to a restrained civil personasuited to their calling, it also threatened to interpose a new moral foun-dation for civil governance, thereby muddying Pufendorf ’s elegantuncoupling of political jurisprudence from moral philosophy, the exer-cise of civil from moral authority.

.

Although moral voluntarism plays a key role in the InstitutionesJurisprudentiae Divinae of , it was not until he came to write theFundamenta Juris Naturae et Gentium of that Thomasius made hisAffektenlehre central to his construction of natural law. Rather than beinga fully independent work, however, the Fundamenta is a rectification andreworking of the Institutiones. It consists of a new framework for naturallaw – provided by the Affektenlehre – followed by a series of chapters, cross-referenced to their counterparts in the Institutiones, and containingdetailed instructions to students for the emendation of the earlier doc-trines. If we are to discuss the role of Thomasius’ anthropology of thepassions in the Fundamenta, then we must first give an account of theInstitutiones, so that we can grasp Thomasius’ view of the problems theAffektenlehre was intended to solve.

.. Institutiones Jurisprudentiae Divinae

While no less inimical to metaphysical rationalism, Thomasius’ earlynatural law work remains closer to the theological roots of voluntarismthan Pufendorf ’s. As a result, in comparison with Pufendorf ’s funda-mental and magisterial reconstruction of natural law, Thomasius’uncoupling of theology, moral philosophy, and jurisprudence takes adifferent and more circuitous route. The marks of this difference areevident in the title of the Institutiones Jurisprudentiae Divinae itself. For hereThomasius was signalling his intention to construct a jurisprudence thatwould encompass not just the laws enacted by men and known byreason, but also the ‘divine positive laws’ or biblical commands willed byGod and known by revelation – at least to the degree these commandspertained to man’s temporal happiness.

Despite the apparent anomaly, though, the inclusion of certain bibli-cal laws within jurisprudence was in fact true to Thomasius’ deconfes-sionalising agenda. For his objective was to transfer the authority for

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interpreting and applying a particular class of biblical laws – those thatcould be deemed as pertaining to man’s civil welfare – from academictheologians to academic jurists. Perhaps Thomasius saw this as a way ofdealing with the fact that even in a deconfessionalised state such asBrandenburg-Prussia biblical law continued to play a role in the regula-tion of civil life at the end of the seventeenth century. In any case it isclear that while Thomasius continued to use the same deconfessionalis-ing threshold as Pufendorf – the exclusion of all matters pertaining tosalvation from the sphere of civil governance – he could not immedi-ately follow his mentor in superimposing this threshold on the one thatdivided natural from revealed (biblical) knowledge, thereby making aclean break between a natural jurisprudence and a revealed religion.This residual retention of biblical law in Pufendorf ’s natural law frame-work is responsible for the ambivalent character of Thomasius’ centralformulations in the Institutiones.

This ambivalence is visible in Thomasius’ attempt to ground the secu-larising separation of theology and jurisprudence in a powerful theolog-ical doctrine: namely, the doctrine of humanity’s two conditions orStände – the condition of innocence and undamaged human nature(status integritatis), and the post-lapsarian condition of corrupted capac-ities (status corruptus). According to Thomasius, natural law and divinerevealed law both originate in God’s will, which is the condition of theiragreement (IJD, .., ). Further, the two kinds of law have bound manin both his conditions, of innocence and corruption (IJD, ..–,–). In a footnote to this last remark Thomasius acknowledges that inadmitting revealed knowledge of man’s incorrupt state to the domain ofnatural law he is deviating from Pufendorf who, as we recall, excludesthe incorrupt condition and its (Christian) laws from the domain ofnatural law. In retaining the Christian two-state doctrine, Thomasiusenvisages the Institutiones as prospecting a via media between Pufendorf ’ssecular voluntarism and the metaphysical rationalism of ValentinAlberti, their common arch-enemy. Nonetheless, Thomasius’ construc-tion of the status integritatis is one that precludes Alberti’s, Rachel’s, andLeibniz’s treatment of it as a condition to which fallen man might returnin search of pure moral norms for the governance of civil life.

Thomasius opens the Institutiones by rehearsing the voluntarist doc-trine that the divine being consists in pure will issuing laws, rather thanin pure thought to which man might accede through contemplation. Hesupports this with the long footnote summarising his father’s repudiationof the metaphysical conception of God – as divine intellectual being –

Natural law

for tempting man to imagine that he might conform his being to God’s,or become holy, through thought (IJD, ..–, –). Thomasius’ use ofthe two-states doctrine follows in the same vein. Beginning with the claimthat the biblical account of the Fall may be regarded as history – there-fore as ‘a common instrument of the four faculties’ – Thomasius pro-ceeds to give a rendition of man’s change of state that would in fact seemto owe more to theology than history (IJD, .., ). From a conditionin which his body was flawless and immune to decay, his reason able topenetrate the essences of things, and his will perfectly attuned to God’s,man has passed into one in which his body is disfigured by disease andhaunted by death, his mind darkened and forever removed from nature’shidden essences, and his will so corrupted by affect and desire as torender its natural conformation to God’s impossible (IJD, ..–,–). ‘These changes in man’, Thomasius comments, ‘are so great thatwe must imagine it absolutely impossible that man could improve suchimperfections through natural means in this life’ (IJD, .., ).

It is, therefore, vain of Alberti and the other metaphysicians – in factsymptomatic of the corruption of their theology by pagan speculation– to teach that man might know his duties through some sort of recov-ery of his integral or holy state. As we have seen, according to this doc-trine, man may accede to knowledge of that which is good and bad ‘initself ’, antecedent to God’s will, through rational participation in God’sintelligising of such ‘perfections’ as love and justice. Such a doctrine isimpossible, according to Thomasius, because it is God’s willing thatcreates moral qualities, which are therefore not available to his or anyoneelse’s reason beforehand. Moreover, it is unacceptable to teach that manmight accede to pure ideas of good and evil through conceptualisationbecause, following the ruin of his faculties, ‘such conceptualisingsignifies an imperfection’ (IJD, .., ).

According to Thomasius, then, man accedes to moral knowledge notthrough concepts shared with God but via two other paths. LikePufendorf, he argues that this knowledge can be gained in part throughnatural knowledge of man’s own fallen nature and of the rules requiredfor its preservation. But, unlike Pufendorf, Thomasius argues that it mayalso be gained through the positive biblical laws that God has issued tofallen man in partial compensation for the corruption of his knowledgeand nature (IJD, .. and fn., –). For this reason, because theypurport to ground justice in transcendent or divine concepts of it, meta-physical theologians are unable to determine the role either of naturalor of divine positive law in the sphere of civil jurisprudence.

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On this basis, Thomasius is able to divide up the field of natural lawin a manner suited to his deconfessionalising agenda. Theology’s properconcern with man’s eternal felicity means that it can have no place in‘divine jurisprudence’, whose concern is the divine and human lawsenacted to ensure man’s civil happiness, making it the exclusive preserveof the law faculty (IJD, ..–, –). Natural law and divine positivelaw, while agreeing as co-ordinate expressions of the divine will, differ intheir mode of knowing it and in their object. Natural law is known vianatural reason – in fact through the deduction of the rules required bycivil peace – and applies to conduct whose goodness or badness is deter-mined by its agreement or non-agreement with man’s rational being.Divine positive law, though, is known through its revelation or publica-tion in the Bible and applies to conduct that would be otherwise morallyindifferent:

These two laws differ in that natural law has to do with conducts which neces-sarily agree or conflict with common rational human nature. Revealed law,though, [concerns] such conducts as are in the middle, and neither agree norconflict with this nature.

Because the light of nature shows that God has willed that man should berational and that his conduct should be subordinated to a certain norm, itfollows necessarily . . . that God will have commanded such conducts as neces-sarily promote rational nature and will prohibit those that conflict with it. At thesame time, there are many conducts whose performance or neglect does notdisturb man’s nature, nor benefit it as such, which means that man cannot knowthrough rational reflection whether they are commanded or prohibited. Henceit was necessary that this law be published. (IJD, ..–, )

With these arguments Thomasius in fact transfers the right to deter-mine which biblical laws will be given civil effect wholly to the estate ofpolitical jurists. The jurisconsults will use the criterion of civil welfare toexclude all revealed law concerned with salvation from the jurispruden-tial field. Next, they will use the threshold of moral indeterminacy todetermine when biblical law can supplement natural jurisprudence,while finally claiming the authority to regulate the ceremonial forms ofpublic worship in the name of civil peace. Thomasius leaves us in nodoubt as to the political importance of these intellectual distinctions:

Moral theology teaches the Ten Commandments – which are binding on allmen – without distinguishing between natural and revealed law, and uses theHoly Scriptures to ground both kinds of law. Generally therefore the theolo-gians take the moral law and the natural law to be the same thing. But divinejurisprudence separates natural law from divine revealed law, deriving theformer from the rules of sound reason (ex dictamine rectae rationis), in accordance

Natural law

with the teaching of the apostle Paul, but taking the latter purely from divinerevelation. This distinction has indescribable benefits for the discussion of theotherwise intractable controversies over the duty of princes with regard to suchcommands, and whether he has the power to dispense with them or not, overthe power and authority to make laws, and so on. (IJD, .., )

Nonetheless, despite delivering the required separation of theologyand jurisprudence, the intellectual machinery of the Institutiones remainsquite unstable. This is due to the difficulties Thomasius encounters inreconciling the Lutheran voluntarism which he inherited from his fatherand the far more radical and secularised voluntarism which he hadencountered in Pufendorf ’s natural law. The prime locus of this instabil-ity lies in the problematic relation between the theological voluntarismof Thomasius’ version of the two-state doctrine and the civil voluntar-ism underpinning Pufendorf ’s doctrines of status and sovereignty. Infact, despite their shared hostility to orthodox metaphysical natural law,there is a crucial difference between the ways in which Thomasius andPufendorf construct man’s moral nature as an object of (natural law)knowledge and governance.

For Thomasius it is the post-lapsarian corruption of the faculties thatremoves man from the capacity for rational self-governance advocatedby the scholastic moral theologians and philosophers. In using the doc-trine of man’s damaged faculties to determine that he be governed byimposed laws rather than self-imposed reasons, Thomasius is, however,retaining the idea of moral self-governance as the criterion for judgingman’s moral corruption and as the goal of his moral restitution – evenif the latter is impossible ‘through natural means in this life’. This meansthat Thomasius treats post-lapsarian natural law and its civil applica-tions as a surrogate for the natural law that governed man in his integralcondition, compensating for the lost capacity for moral self-governancethrough a mix of prudential knowledge and civil discipline. Pufendorf,however, despite using the doctrine of human incapacity to attack themetaphysical rationalists, treats man’s moral nature – his weak, fractious,sociable being – not as the ontological remnant of a more perfect kindof moral and rational being, but simply as the ‘observable’ moral exis-tence (natural status) whose natural laws man must deduce. In govern-ing man’s moral nature, Pufendorf ’s natural law is thus not oriented toa lost capacity for moral self-governance, but solely to the end of civilsecurity, which is the condition of preserving man’s fragile sociable exis-tence. For Pufendorf, natural law and its civil cognate compensates notfor the higher moral being that man once was and still should be, but for

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the fractious sociable being that he happens to be as a matter of fact.Pufendorf ’s natural law is oriented not the recovery of the lost status ofmoral self-governance but to the construction and imposition of a newcivil status: governance by a political superior.

The Institutiones represents Thomasius’ sustained attempt to integratePufendorf ’s secular voluntarist construction of natural law within theframework of Lutheran theological voluntarism. The only intellectualmeans at Thomasius’ disposal for this task was in fact the ‘dualist’ or‘analogical’ current of Lutheran metaphysics represented by his father.This, we recall, used the doctrine of man’s two states to separate thetheological and civil sciences – teaching that it was impossible for fallenman to accede to revealed truth through natural reason. At the sametime, however, it could maintain an attenuated relation between the twodomains, by treating naturally known things as analogues of thingsrevealed through faith which yet remained inaccessible to naturalreason. Using this complex figure of thought, Thomasius is able to con-struct his version of natural law around the inaccessibility of divine willto rational insight. For this enables him to treat Pufendorf ’s naturallyknown natural law as the analogical form of God’s hidden commands,while treating biblical law (divine positive law) as the published orrevealed form, each form compensating in its own way for the lostperfect knowledge characteristic of the incorrupt state.

Thomasius’ construction of natural law in the Institutiones thus steersan unsteady path between the Aristotelian and Pufendorfian frame-works. But the solution Thomasius arrives at is closer to Grotius’ versionof natural law than Pufendorf ’s. Thomasius thus offers a quasi-Aristotelian derivation of natural law in terms of the laws needed torealise an ontological essence, which makes natural law duties ontologi-cally good. This derivation is marked in such formulations as: ‘The lawof nature is a divine law written in the heart of all men and obligatingthem to do that which agrees with man’s rational nature and refrain fromthat which is contrary to it’ (IJD, .., ). At the same time, though,Thomasius is aware that this construction is problematic, as it appearsto bind God’s will to antecedent concepts of good and evil to which manmight accede. He thus attempts to hold the incipient rationalism at bayvia a second, more Pufendorfian deduction. According to this, naturallaws are simply the rules required to preserve the (sociable) nature willedfor man by God, which makes natural laws a function of civil security.

In fact the only way that Thomasius can forestall this incipient ration-alism in the Institutiones is to treat the rational deduction of natural law

Natural law

as itself symptomatic of the limited or analogical knowledge of God’swill available to man in his fallen condition. He does this by treating themoral indifference of certain actions as a sign of fallen man’s incapac-ity for natural knowledge of their true moral character, thereby deviat-ing markedly from Pufendorf ’s secular voluntarism. Unlike Pufendorf,who treats all ‘natural’ actions as morally indifferent – as a means ofexcluding moral theology from the domain of natural law – Thomasiustreats the moral indifference of some actions as indicating the need tosupplement natural law with revealed commandments. Thomasius thusreinterprets his mentor’s secular delimitation of ethics, treating it asindicative of the inaccessibility – rather than the irrelevance – of thedivine mind to natural jurisprudence. In using the imputed deficiencyof natural knowledge to include a supplement of biblical law withinjurisprudence, Thomasius sacrifices the sharpness of Pufendorf ’s dis-tinction between the secular–political and religious–theologicaldomains.

The Institutiones thus contains two distinct ways of desacralising thedomain of civil governance. According to the first, while necessary andinevitable, the derivation of civil duties from the end of civil peace is asign of man’s corruption. According to the second (Pufendorfian) way,the derivation of civil duties from the end of civil peace, far from approx-imating man’s lost capacity for moral self-governance – inaccessible ornot – is in fact the means of relegating this concern in favour of adifferent derivation of such duties: namely, their imposition by a politi-cal superior as a means of governing man’s fractious sociability in accor-dance with the end of security.

The instability arising from these two ways of ‘secularising’ naturallaw is evident in Thomasius’ treatment of marriage law which, as anexus for religious and civil governance, was a neuralgic point forthe problem of deconfessionalisation in early modern Germany. In theInstitutiones, Thomasius offers a quasi-Aristotelian deduction of thenatural laws of marriage, but one whose final insufficiency dictates itssupplementation by biblical marriage law. As the ends of this society arethe begetting of children and the assuaging of lust, and as these endshave been implanted in the marriage partners in the form of an innerdesire for marital society, it should be possible to derive the duties ofmarriage by deducing them from these ends in accordance with themethod of natural law (IJD, ..–, ). So powerful is the ‘burningdesire’ implanted in man for the realisation of the natural ends of mar-riage that it completely overwhelms his capacity to judge and conform

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

himself to the duties of marriage (IJD, ..–, –). Con-sequently, were it not for the relevant biblical injunctions regarding adul-tery, incest, polygamy, whoring – acceded to by jurists in order to secureman’s civil happiness – marital conduct would remain morallyindifferent (IJD, ..ff, ff).

Outside of the natural law setting of the Institutiones, however, in acontext determined by a concrete religious–political dispute over theregulation of marriage, Thomasius adopts a position much closer toPufendorf ’s statism. The dispute in question had broken out over themarriage of Maria Amalia, the Calvinist daughter of Friedrich WilhelmI (III) of Brandenburg, to the Lutheran Duke Moritz Wilhelm of Saxon-Zeitz, a brother of the Electoral Prince of Saxony, where the marriagewas opposed on religious grounds (Lieberwirth , ). In theLutheran theologian Philipp Müller – Provost of Magdeburg and pro-fessor at the University of Jena – published a pamphlet in which heattacked the marriage, using extensive biblical citation to show theunlawfulness of such inter-faith unions. For our immediate concerns, themost striking characteristic of Thomasius’ polemical response to thispamphlet – given in his Fürstlicher Personen Heirat (The Marriage of RoyalPersons, ) – is how little it owes to the ‘divine law’ framework of theInstitutiones. Rather than grounding the prince’s marital duties and rightsin natural or biblical law, as mediated by his theological or juristic Räte,here Thomasius derives them directly from positive Staatsrecht:

In fact, from that which we have . . . advanced from the Osnabruck Peace Treaty[ie., the Treaty of Westphalia], it can be seen following it that the adherents ofthe Reformed [Calvinist] religion were expressly included [in its provisions];that they should enjoy all the privileges and rights enjoyed by the adherents ofthe Augsburg Confession [Lutherans]; and that the freedom of royal persons ofboth religions to marry each other, arising from divine law, was reinforcedrather than limited by that [treaty]. (ADS, , )

In other words, under the pressure of confessional disputation,Thomasius appeals to political law not to mop up the residue ofindifferent conduct remaining from the application of natural and bib-lical law, but as the source of autonomous duty-imposing norms. Heretherefore the role of political jurisprudence is not to compensate for alost capacity for rational insight into true morality. Rather it is to trans-mit norms arising from a politically imposed pacification of society.These are norms grounded in the political–juridical instrument thatbanished all concern with true morality from the governance of civilsociety: the Treaty of Westphalia.

Natural law

.. Fundamenta Juris Naturae et Gentium

Some of these ambivalences and instabilities are resolved in Thomasius’final formulation of his natural law doctrine, the Fundamenta Juris Naturaeet Gentium of – translated into German as Grundlehren des Natur- andVölker-Rechts in , which is the edition I have used. Looking back atthe Institutiones Thomasius explains to his readers that with the conceptof divine positive law he had been attempting to find a middle pathbetween the alternatives of natural and Mosaic law and, indeed,between Pufendorf and his scholastic opponents (FJN, Fwd, –). Indoing so he had failed to separate fully the principles of natural knowl-edge and revelation, in part because he had located positive law in therevealed word of God, and in part because he had failed to scrutinisewith sufficient care the central thesis of Pufendorf ’s opponents: namely,that principles of natural law ‘must be looked for in their agreement andnon-agreement with the condition of innocence’ (FJN, Fwd, ). He soonlearned, though, that he would be reviled by the scholastics regardless ofwhether he attempted to reconcile his conception of natural law with theBible, hence ‘the [concept of] universal positive law was renounced andfinally the hypothesis that the foundation of natural law is to be soughtin the state of innocence has henceforth been completely buried and for-gotten’. As a result:

The constitution of natural law as we are now considering it requires that wedisregard the Holy Scriptures and the state of innocence. This is especially sosince not only has the state of innocence been utterly lost, it also cannot beregained in this life – not to mention the fact that while the purpose of HolyScriptures is the blessed life in the next world, moral philosophy and the wholeof jurisprudence are aimed solely at true happiness in the present life. (FJN,Fwd, )

In this manner, Thomasius abandoned the residual dualist or analog-ical metaphysics of the Institutiones. Henceforth natural law was to haveno relation to an inaccessible condition of rational self-governance – noteven an analogical one – and there would be no biblical supplement fornatural law in the domain of civil jurisprudence. Thomasius thus tookthe deconfessionalising threshold, which partitioned the goal of civilhappiness from that of eternal felicity, and superimposed it on the epis-temological one that separated the principles of natural jurisprudentialknowledge from those of revealed biblical truth. In doing so, he approx-imated Pufendorf ’s clean break between a biblical moral theology con-cerned with salvation, and a natural ethics and jurisprudence whose

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ends reach no higher than civil well-being. With this, Thomasius nego-tiated his own passage from theological to secular voluntarism, relegat-ing the two-state conception of innocent and fallen man in favour of aconception of man as a being whose single passional nature was thesource and object of naturally known ethical and political duties.

Nonetheless, despite arriving at an intellectual destination similar toPufendorf ’s, Thomasius had taken a very different route. If Pufendorfhad secularised natural law by decoupling the recognition of civil dutiesfrom the cultivation of moral personality – specifically from theChristian–metaphysical contemplative integration of the person – thenThomasius did so by secularising the cultivation of moral personalityitself. As we shall now see, this means that Thomasius’ construction ofnatural law continues to differ in important regards from Pufendorf ’s.For, in contradistinction to Pufendorf ’s conception of the imposed char-acter of civil offices, Thomasius’ foundational appeal to a quasi-Epicurean moral anthropology allows civil duties to remain grounded ina practice of moral cultivation, albeit a very different practice to the con-templative exercises of the Christian rationalists.

The first three chapters of the Fundamenta – in which Thomasius out-lines his image of man as a being whose will is governed by corporeallyrooted passions quite outside the reach of intellectual control – are littlemore than a summary of the Ausübung der Sittenlehre, minus the latter’sideal of reasonable love and the fideist conclusion. In the FundamentaThomasius uses his Affektenlehre to mount a frontal assault on metaphys-ical moral philosophy and Christian natural law (FJN, ..–, –).If man is governed by his affects, specifically by the three dominant pas-sions of ambition, lust, and greed, this is not because he has fallen froma higher condition of rational self-governance but is simply the result ofthe kind of natural being that he is. Like all such beings, man is drivenby the desire to preserve himself and consequently is attracted to thatwhich sustains his life and well-being and repelled by that which threat-ens it. These visceral feelings of attraction and repulsion, giving rise tothe affects of hope and fear, are the primitive source of moral judgmentand natural law.

From the perspective of this ethical naturalism, and apparently mis-understanding the full significance of Pufendorf ’s doctrine of imposedentia moralia, Thomasius declares that the scholastics and Pufendorfshare a common error: they make a sharp distinction between man’smoral and physical nature. For the will is both driven by the physiologi-cal powers of the passions and yet functions as the source of their moral

Natural law

governance. This means that the will must achieve moral governance inand through these powers: ‘The moral nature of man is thus a conceptof the power to will through forces controlled by the will. Because of thisthe physical nature of man is not rightly opposed to the moral nature ofman, nor absolutely and finally to the intellectual [vernünftigen] or ratio-nal [verständlichen] nature of man’ (FJN, ..–, ). Yet the will is neverrational in the sense of acting on the basis of ideas, for these are theexclusive preserve of the understanding. For its part the understandingis capable of discerning the ‘truly good’ – that is, the conduct that pre-serves man’s life and happiness – but only on the basis of a prior calmingof the passions. This tempering is a work of the will on the will, requir-ing the arousal of passions – hope and fear – to effect a restraint of thepassions (FJN, ..–, –).

With his Affektenlehre in place, Thomasius is ready to announce the endof the metaphysical moral philosophy and its replacement by a disci-pline for governing the passions. Arguing that if the will is governed bythe balance of passional powers then it is meaningless to talk of freedomof the will – in the sense of its freedom to choose on the basis of moralideas – Thomasius declares with an overly optimistic flourish: ‘Now, ifthe will has no freedom to choose, then undoubtedly the whole of scho-lastic moral philosophy falls to the ground’ (FJN, .., ). Nonetheless,while not itself free, the will can be restrained. This gives rise to actionsthat are ‘free-willed’ in the sense of being chosen on the basis of a rec-ognition – itself dependent on the calming of the passions – of theconduct required to give man a long and happy life. This degree offreedom is enough for individuals to be held responsible for their actions(FJN, ..–, –). Moral philosophy of the standard intellectualistkind must therefore be replaced by a ‘moral discipline’ that will provideindividuals with the capacity to moderate their passions, thereby allow-ing their reason to judge the conduct conducive to man’s civil happiness(FJN, .., ). Thomasius thus uses his quasi-Epicurean anthropologyin order to expunge the residual theological aspects of his constructionof natural law in the Institutiones, and to ground the naturalistic construc-tion of the Fundamenta. At the heart of the Fundamenta lies the conceptionof man as a being whose civil happiness is dependent on the ethical andjuridical restraint of his unruly passional nature.

As we have already noted, constituting the moral self as a physiolog-ical phenomenon is Thomasius’ way of allowing it to be approached ina detranscendentalised manner, as something open to empirical obser-vation and practical control in accordance with worldly ends: ‘For moral

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nature also belongs in a certain manner to physics, because it dependsupon and is driven by the will, whose treatment belongs to physics [ie.,the science of corporeal things]’ (FJN, .., ). Only thus could thosewho had been exposed to university metaphysics learn to refrain fromapproaching their moral self in a grandiloquent sacralising manner; asif it were the imago Dei or as the remnant spark of divine reason; as if itwere something known only through the purifying contemplation of apriori concepts, and conformed to such exalted ends as purity of will,selfless love, and union with God. Thomasius’ ethical naturalism is thusintended to detach the cultivation of civil duties from the self-exaltingpursuit of ends akin to holiness, and to ensure instead that such dutieswould be acceded to through a practice of passional restraint geared tothe ends of personal civility and social peace.

Nonetheless, in failing to comprehend and follow Pufendorf ’s farmore radical detranscendentalising of ethics – via the doctrine ofimposed offices – Thomasius’ natural law remains closer to moral phi-losophy than his mentor’s. Pufendorf ’s argument is that man’s naturalgoods only cross the threshold of morality through their conversion intoduties through the imposition of offices, without which man is incapablegoverning his liberty in accordance with natural law. Thomasius’ argu-ment is that inner tranquillity is itself a natural good from which naturallaw duties may be derived. We cannot agree then with those commen-tators who see Thomasius’ attempt to provide an ethical basis for polit-ical commands as superseding Pufendorf ’s framework (Schneewind, –). In fact Thomasius’ naturalist anthropology of the pas-sions is an attempt to reach the same destination as Pufendorf ’s anti-naturalist doctrine of imposed offices: a secular deconfessionalisedconstruction of natural law governed by the end of social peace. Moreto the point, in rejecting Pufendorf ’s radical divorce of the imposition ofcivil offices from the cultivation of moral personality, it seems likely thatThomasius makes his path to this end ever more circuitous andprotracted.

The problems encountered in this regard are focused in two relatedaspects of the construction of natural law duties in the Fundamenta. First,Thomasius’ passional anthropology leads him to establish a continuumbetween inner self-restraint and external juridical coercion, as steps ona single hierarchy of governance. In tying duties to man’s passionalnature, Thomasius is thus deviating markedly from Pufendorf. For, inregarding civil disturbance as the result of the unrestrained inner pas-sions breaking out into anti-social conduct, Thomasius treats legal

Natural law

coercion as compensating for the failure of moral self-governance. In areciprocal manner, he simultaneously treats inner self-restraint as ahigher form of the civil governance exercised through external coercion.Despite a good deal of commentary to the contrary, then, the predom-inant construction of natural law in the Fundamenta is characterised notby a sharp break between morality and law but by a series of graduatedsteps linking moral self-restraint to legal coercion.

There are, Thomasius argues (almost certainly against Pufendorf),two forms of obligation. Inner obligation arises from restraint of the pas-sions, gives rise to knowledge of what it is that makes for a long andhappy life, and issues in the wise man’s counsel. Outer obligation comesfrom the administration of fear and hope, compels the ‘fools’ – or thoseincapable of inner restraint – to keep their conduct within the boundsof civil peace, and is embodied in the ruler’s command backed by sanc-tion (FJN, ..–, –). The two forms of obligation though are bothdirected to the same end – securing inner and outer peace in accordancewith the end of natural law – which means that morality and law arejoined on a single hierarchy of governance:

Further, given that the fools show through their actions that they lack inner calmand are thus incapable of promoting or preserving outer calm – in fact that theycause the disturbance of outer calm – it follows that the norm of a wise man,whose purpose is to lead the fools from unhappiness to happiness, is oriented tothree main points: to the achievement of inner calm, or, the restraint of the fool-ishness of the three main desires; to the promotion of external calm throughpeaceable actions; [and] to avoiding the disruption of outer [public] calm byrefraining from actions that disturb the peace. (FJN, .., )

To achieve the right distribution of friendly counsel and coercivecommand across this hierarchy the wise man must have regard to ‘thedegrees of foolishness’. The greatest fools, who disrupt outer peace anddisturb the freedom of others, require command to the exclusion ofcounsel. The ‘middling’ fools do not disrupt social peace but neither dothey cultivate the good-will and friendship of others. Hence theirgovernance can be largely based on counsel with a view to rectifying thisdefect, while not excluding command should their lack of winning waysgive rise to social disturbance. The least foolish, though, because theyneither disturb social peace nor lack the ability to win the good-will ofothers, require no commands and should be governed solely throughcounsel aimed at reinforcing their capacity for passional self-restraint(FJN, I..–, –). Actions can thus be divided into good, evil, and‘middling’ or indifferent – depending on whether they are oriented to

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the attainment of inner calm, the disruption of external peace, orneither disturb nor promote social peace, but seek it without cultivatinginner calm: ‘here you have the sources of the three-fold good of the hon-ourable [ehrlichen], the decent [anständigen] and the just [gerechten]’ (FJN,.., ).

The second obstacle to Thomasius’ full ‘political’ desacralisation ofnatural law comes in the figure of the sage. Clearly, in situating legalcoercion as compensating for the failure of moral self-governance,Thomasius establishes a hierarchical continuum between law andmorality. The wise man is described as unifying the three kinds of good-ness: ‘Nevertheless, this threefold good should not be separated anddivided. Because he is not wise who does not live virtuously, decently andjustly at the same time’ (FJN, .., ). Thomasius thus exhorts his stu-dents to govern themselves by beginning with the least perfect of thethree goods, law-abiding conduct, and work their way up through civil-ity to the inner tranquillity arising from self-restraint of the passions(FJN, .., ). Moreover, this way of relating law and morality fails toavoid the political chiliasm that had been characteristic of moral-philo-sophical accounts of law and that would resurface again in Kant’saccount of the law–morality relation. For, if legal coercion is a compen-sation for the failure of moral self-governance, then it is possible that withthe general attainment of the latter there might be no further need forthe coercive legal governance of society. Finally, this secularised escha-tology haunts Thomasius’ construction of the relation between legalobligation and individual right in the Fundamenta. If the imposition oflegal obligation is construed as merely clearing away the obstacles stand-ing in the way of rights arising from the capacity for moral self-gover-nance, then these rights – to a long and happy life – appear as groundedin the individual moral personality. This, of course, is quite unlikePufendorf ’s view of them as reflexes of the duties imposed by a superiorfor the governance of man’s permanently dangerous liberty. Thomasius’view of the state as the natural complement to man’s capacity for moralself-cultivation is, we recall, precisely the teleological account thatPufendorf rejects, commenting that it ‘presupposes a kind of civil statewherein citizens are without any fault and wickedness, when in fact statesare a sort of remedy for human imperfection’ (DSH, § , ).

Nonetheless, despite the continuum that Thomasius’ moral anthro-pology introduces to the law–morality relation, his conception of thisrelation is also informed by a second, more disjunctive treatment of it.This second construction is also focused in the relation between inner

Natural law

and outer obligation, but here Thomasius treats the latter form of obli-gation – imposed by a superior possessing the means of coercion – asautonomous of inner moral obligation, rather than as conditional on itsfailure. He thus rejoins Pufendorf in arguing that all right comes fromexternally imposed obligation, as no-one can obligate themselves orclaim a right over themselves, which means that: ‘all right is external notinternal’ (FJN, ..–, ). On this construction, rights in the sense ofthe performance of compellable duties arise wholly from the sphere ofjustice, now conceived as an autonomous domain of external obligationsimposed by a political superior, while decorum and morality do not giverise to rights at all – not even to ‘imperfect’ ones (FJN, ..–, –). Atthis point then the hierarchical relation between morality and law fallsapart, as the different modes in which individuals accede to their obliga-tions no longer form a continuum and arise in fact from autonomousmodes of governing human conduct:

From this it follows that what a man does from inner obligation, and in accor-dance with the rules of morality and decorum, is specifically governed by virtue;so that this man should be called virtuous [tugendhaft] rather than law-abiding[gerecht]. But that which a man does in accordance with the rules of justice, orfrom external obligation, is governed by justice, and on the basis of such actionshe would be called law-abiding. (FJN, .., )

According to Thomasius’ second, Pufendorfian, construction ofnatural law, then, the coercive character of justice or civil law arises notfrom its role in compensating for the failure of moral self-restraint butfrom a different source: the fact that these laws serve ends determinedby rulers possessing the means of compulsion. Moral counsel and polit-ical command thus fall into different domains, as the end of civil peaceis construed not as the outer expression of inner moral tranquillity, butas a purely public condition reached through the application of themeans of political–juridical coercion to external conduct (FJN, ..–,). On this construction, law is not a less perfect form of governancethan morality and decorum but simply a different one, based in theautonomous end of social pacification. This construction is thus incom-patible with the doctrine of a continuum between law and morality, andwith the eschatological conception of a society of self-governing individ-uals possessing individual rights.

The manner in which politics and law are admitted to the domainof moral philosophy – that is, the way in which moral philosophy isdesacralised – differs significantly between these two constructions.For, according to the first, the coercively imposed rules of outer peace

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prescribed by political jurisprudence are extensions of the self-imposedrules for the inner restraint of the passions. This means that politicalcommand (Herrschaft) and moral counsel (Ratschlag) meet in a singlesubject. This is the political jurist as Epicurean sage, who is capable ofcalibrating the ‘degrees of foolishness’ separating morality, decorum,and law, and thereby determining when the state should intervene toreinforce virtue or, conversely, when self-governing virtue makes thestate redundant. In construing him as sage, Thomasius thus envisagesthe political jurist assuming the role once played by theologians in settingthe moral parameters of political governance. According to the secondconstruction, however, the compulsory duties prescribed by politicaljurisprudence arise solely from the state’s interest in social peace, inde-pendently of all concerns with inner ethical self-restraint. Here, then,the political jurist is not the integral wise man of moral philosophy butan adviser whose expertise is bound to the exercise of politicalcommand, so that the role of political jurisprudence is to set the politi-cal parameters of moral culture.

We can see the role that he envisaged for the first, ethically based, con-ception of the morality–law relation in Thomasius’ new treatment ofmarital duties in the Fundamenta. Here he revises the account of maritalduties given in the Institutiones, repudiating his own earlier treatment oflust as symptomatic of fallen man’s complete incapacity to governhimself in accordance with natural law. Lust, Thomasius now argues, isno more powerful than the passions of ambition and greed, and all canbe controlled through the rules of morality, decency, and justice (FJN,.., ). There is thus no residue of indifferent conduct awaitingdetermination by biblical law – a strategy that Thomasius nowdenounces as ‘papist’. For those duties not determined by the rules ofjustice in the strict sense – monogamy and permanent cohabitation, forexample – can certainly be determined by the rules of morality anddecorum, as being necessary for the moderation of desire or the decentrearing of children (FJN, .., –). The problem with this solution,however, is that it assumes the existence of a civil society already in pos-session of a deconfessionalised capacity for moral self-governance,capable of cultivating its duties – including its marital duties – in a tol-erant and civil manner, in accordance with the secular ends of personaland civil tranquillity. We need only recall provost Müller’s attack oninter-faith marriages, however – which he treats as tantamount to pro-faning the sacrament through union with the infidel – to recognise thatthe German societies had not yet reached this pacified condition.

Natural law

It should not surprise us, then, that as soon as Thomasius is con-fronted by morality which is not in the required secularised civil form –that is, as soon as he re-engages with the still-prevalent religious deter-mination of civil duties – the posited continuum between moral counseland political command, the teacher and the ruler, falls to pieces, andwith it Thomasius’ conception of ‘natural law in the broad sense’. Thishappens most strikingly in the first chapter of Book , ‘On Man’s Dutiesto God’, where Thomasius is recasting his earlier account of natural lawreligious duties. For here, despite his wish to construct these duties byapplying the rules of morality, decorum, and justice, Thomasius mustconfront the fact that the moral–theological and political–juridicaldeterminations of religious duties are in conflict, precluding the appealto a single moral hierarchy of governance, and forcing the wise man tonegotiate between conflicting ethical ends:

[The wise man] must explain the principles of the whole rights of princes inreligious affairs together with the foresight enabling one to prevent a princebeing oppressed by teachers or priests. [He must also explain] how one shouldtake the middle path when a prince seeks to alter external religious worship, sothat he neither tyrannises over conscience nor allows too much scope to thosewho under the pretext of their conscience foment disorder in the republic. (FJN,.., )

Rather than reconciling moral counsel and political command,teacher and prince in a unifying natural law hierarchy, the political juristis now forced to establish a different and less harmonious kind of hier-archy: ‘There must be a thorough demonstration of the agreement anddifference between political rule [Herrschaft], religious ministry andteaching, together with their necessary friendship and interconnection,that is nevertheless associated with the necessary dependence of minis-try and teaching on political rule’ (FJN, .., ). This fracturing of thelaw–morality continuum, and the emergent dominance of the politicalover the clerical and academic estates, arises from the fact that, in relig-ion, the political jurist must deal with a morality that threatens the ulti-mate end of social peace:

One must deal with the injustice of wars against other peoples on the groundsof religion or Reformation . . .

The justice and injustice of civil wars caused by religion – both in the case ofauthorities attempting to impose a new religion and in that of subjects wishingto preserve the old one – must also be dealt with.

One must show who may decide such a question, whether it is the religiousor the secular scholars, whether theologians or jurists or both are entitled.

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

One must treat of measures in a republic and of complaints [against them]arising from religion, whether and how far such [complaints] should be permit-ted. (FJN, ..–, –)

Faced with the existence of moral communities conformed to inter-nally homogenous and mutually hostile religious anthropologies, thepresuppositions of a general natural law ethics based on a secularisedmoral anthropology begin to buckle. In such circumstances, rather thanproviding it with an ethical basis, communal moral self-governance pro-vides political governance with one of its most intractable problems.Under this pressure, the unity of moral counsel and political commandsymbolised by the academic sage breaks down, and the political juristbegins to assume a different form, as the bearer of a political scienceformed in and for the state:

But not all auditors are suitable for this doctrine. It is in fact a true state secret[Königliches Geheimniß]. Accordingly it is to be presented only to adults who arecapable of discretion, who have given clear proof that they have progressed acertain way along the path of wisdom, and who are devoted not to the univer-sity but to government. (FJN, .., )

Moreover, Thomasius offers tacit acknowledgement of his own error inpresuming that a science dealing with the political regulation of religioncould be addressed to a general moral community.

In this regard we should accordingly confess our own lack of circumspection,in that we have until now carelessly revealed many truths belonging to thisscience. For there are numerous examples to hand showing how irrationallythey act who present counsel pertaining to religious matters in public writings,even when they are by no means unreasonable in other matters. (FJN, ..,)

With this confession, though, we reach the limits of Thomasius’ naturallaw, whose attachment to a single moral anthropology finally renders itincapable of detaching the political jurist from the moral philosopher.

.

In the event, Thomasius’ uncoupling of law and politics from theologyand moral philosophy – of the exercise of civil power from the pursuitof moral truth – finds its definitive formulation not in his natural lawworks but in his political jurisprudence, in particular his political juris-prudence of church law (Staatskirchenrecht). Here, in a series of works thatare indeed addressed to ‘adults who are capable of discretion . . . and

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who are devoted not to the university but to government’, he outlines aprofound and ambitious dual programme – for the desacralisation of thestate, and the spiritualisation of religion.

The influence of Pufendorf ’s political and theological writing onThomasius’ Staatskirchenrecht is clear in its central text, the posthumouslypublished Vollständige Erläuterung der Kirchenrechts-Gelahrtheit oder GründlicheAbhandlung vom Verhältniß der Religion gegen den Staat (Complete Explanation ofthe Jurisprudence of Church Law or Fundamental Treatise on the Relation ofReligion to the State) of . The first volume of the Vollständige Erläuterungconsists of a reprint of Pufendorf ’s De Habitu Religionis Christianae ad VitamCivilem (On the Nature of Religion in Relation to Civil Society, ), in Latinand German, accompanied by Thomasius’ extensive commentary. Thesecond volume appears to be an edited version of Thomasius’ lectureson Staatskirchenrecht. In addition to this compendium on church law andgovernance, Thomasius also published an important series of disputa-tions dealing with the state’s rights in religious affairs. We shall be con-cerned with two of these dissertations in particular: Vom Recht evangelischerFürsten in Mitteldingen oder Kirchenzeremonien (De Jure Principis circa Adiaphora,Of the Right of Protestant Princes in Middle-Things or Religious Ceremonies, )and Das Recht evangelischer Fürsten in theologischen Streitigkeiten (The Right ofProtestant Princes in Theological Controversies, ). Of these two disserta-tions only the latter is cited as co-authored with Thomasius’ studentEnno Rudolph Brenneysen, despite the fact that Brenneysen also co-wrote the former, albeit under Thomasius’ professorial direction.

In these works Thomasius addresses the concrete problem of how toconstruct a political–judicial programme for detaching the exercise ofcivil power from the forms of religious authority. Moreover, he did sounder circumstances in which most citizens were still learning their civilduties through religious instruction, and in which most theologians andphilosophers were still teaching that individuals acceded to their civilduties via their Christian moral personality. If, as we have suggested, itsfoundation in moral anthropology ultimately rendered Thomasius’natural law incapable of dealing with these circumstances, this isbecause it meant that he continued to ground civil power in a particularway of acceding to moral truth. This is the lesson to be learned from thefigure of the Epicurean sage in the Fundamenta, who sets the thresholdsbetween morality and law through his own exemplary moral self-governance. Under historical circumstances, however, in which thelinkage between political rule and communal moral culture continuedto threaten social peace with religious civil war, Thomasius’ natural law

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reached its limits – as indeed did all the other forms of natural law thatgrounded civil duties in moral anthropology. For, in the sphere of polit-ical decision per se, what these circumstances demanded was not a better(deconfessionalised) moral culture for the ruler, but a radical uncouplingof political rule from moral culture, security from sanctity, the princefrom the sage.

This helps to explain why key Pufendorfian doctrines that play no rolein Thomasius’ natural law – the doctrines of imposed offices and‘absolute’ sovereignty – suddenly become central to Thomasius’Staatskirchenrecht. In taking up Pufendorf ’s officio doctrine in this newcontext, Thomasius uses it consign the pursuit of moral truth and theimposition of civil obligation to two distinct offices – those of the teacherand the prince – thereby suspending all moral–philosophical founda-tions for civil governance, including his own. He does so in order to con-struct a political jurisprudence capable of meeting the contingency inwhich all religious and moral doctrine – true or false – was capable ofthreatening social peace, and therefore had to be regulated indepen-dently of its veracity.

We have already observed, however, that Thomasius’ political juris-prudence of church governance is not grounded in an all-embracingrationalist philosophy, designed to extirpate religion or to transform itinto an expression of man’s rational autonomy. On the contrary,Thomasius’ Staatskirchenrecht is grounded in two interrelated doctrinalfields – a spiritualist theology and a statist politics – designed to supporta dual programme: the spiritualisation of religion and the desacralisa-tion of politics. The result of this dual formulation is a Staatskirchenrechtin which the ‘visible church’ and the clerical estate are to be excludedfrom all exercise of civil power, but in which the state must exercise itspower without concerning itself with the ‘private’ pursuit of transcen-dent truth and moral regeneration. Given this remarkable outcome, weshould discuss its two doctrinal sources in a little more detail.

Thomasius’ conception of religion in the Vollständige Erläuterung isdominated by a spiritualistic and inwardist, typically Protestant, under-standing of moral renewal and salvation. Drawing in part on GottfriedArnold’s Unparteiysche Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie (Impartial History of Religionand Heresy), Thomasius argues that moral regeneration can only occurwhen individuals, eschewing all sacerdotal and ceremonial assistance,acknowledge their misery and freely open themselves to the gratuitousgrace of a loving but inscrutable God. None of the rites and ceremoniesof the visible church, none of the metaphysical doctrines and articles of

From moral philosophy to political jurisprudence

faith – which have only served to promote religious discord and heresy-hunting – can affect an individual’s moral condition, which is deter-mined solely by the inner relation of the will to God. From this arises anecclesiology grounded in a radical distinction between the visible andinvisible church:

The only precept that Christ has given us is the precept of love. All the rest isunnecessary and lacks the character of a true church . . . Christ said, though:‘By love you should know that you are my disciples’; and Peter said: ‘God haschosen some from among all peoples’; because God is always gracious and seesinto the heart of man. And so one finds nothing of the visible church in Christ’steaching, which much more rebukes the Jews for this, that they concern them-selves with external ceremonies and holy days . . . Hence the distinction thatwhen someone seeks the true church in external and visible things, they departfrom the Scriptures. Because [the true church] is understood as the invisiblecommunity, and all predicates [of the church] apply to the invisible church,which is alone holy, and in which Christians are unified in God; and this churchis eternally one. (VKR, .., –)

Like Pufendorf, Thomasius regards this spiritualistic form of religion,epitomised in the simple and loving relation between Christ and his dis-ciples, as the original or ‘primitive’ form of Christianity (DHR, §, –;VKR, , –). In making this non-sacramental private faith the key tosalvation, both thinkers distinguish it from ‘natural religion’, which is aminimalistic religion taught by the state for civil purposes but having nobearing on salvation.

According to Thomasius’ Arnoldian religious history, primitiveChristianity was traduced through the historical assimilation of twoother traditions. As a result of the adoption of Jewish ceremonial andpolitical law – regarding such matters as baptism and Sabbath obser-vance – Christianity developed into a religion claiming the capacity tosave through sacramental rituals and, consequently, the right to a sharein the political governance of a Christian state (VKR, , –). Next,through the absorption of Greek philosophy into its theology –specifically the metaphysical doctrine that man is a being who might beregenerated through the purification of his intellect – Christianity gavebirth to a speculative religiosity or religiose speculation. This in turngave rise to the view that individual salvation depends on knowledge ofspecific intellectual doctrines and articles of faith (VKR, .., ). Wehave, of course, already encountered this view of Greek philosophy inThomasius’ Foreword to Grotius, where he treats Aristotelian andPlatonic metaphysics as the source of a ‘secret theology’, teaching the

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possibility of moral regeneration through speculation and mysticalascent to the pure intellectual forms (VG, –).

Thomasius leaves us in no doubt that Jewish ceremonial law andGreek philosophy are in fact stalking-horses for the ecclesiology andmetaphysical theology of Lutheran orthodoxy, whose representatives hecalls ‘our papists’. Indeed, the whole point of Thomasius’ Arnoldianecclesiastical history is to demonstrate the illegitimacy of confessionalreligion: that is, religion claiming a share in civil authority on the basisof credal doctrines and saving ceremonies. Similarly, the object ofThomasius’ spiritualist theology is to deny that moral renewal is in anyway dependent on the sacramental ceremonies of the Lutheran churchor the metaphysical doctrines of its theology faculties. Salvation iswholly a matter of the private opening of the spirit to a God who seesinto hearts:

Whether we consider God or man, we will find nothing from which reasoncould conclude that God demands such external forms of worship from us. Forhe has an exact knowledge of the heart and needs no external ceremonies forus to declare our will to him. And as for that which most pleases him in hisservice, this too is best known by him. From this our reason must conclude thatthere is nothing in the nature of God that commands us to an external worshipof him. (RFM, § , )

The notion of compulsory forms of worship is thus entirely foreign totrue religion, which consists in the free dedication of the will to God.Consequently, orthodoxy’s claims to theological truth and sacerdotalmediation must be treated as ‘priestcraft’, as a use of false doctrine tosecure the clergy’s civil power. Similarly, in claiming a share in thegovernance of a Christian state – through its jurisdiction over blasphemyand heresy and its claims to the ‘power of the keys’ (ex-communication)– the church must be seen as betraying its true role in opening souls toGod, and as usurping coercive powers properly belonging to the civilsovereign alone (VKR, .., –).

In complementing this spiritualist theology with a desacralised con-ception of politics and the state, Thomasius’ Staatskirchenrecht drawsdirectly on Pufendorf ’s doctrines of imposed moral offices and absolutesovereignty. No matter how alien it might be to the teachings of modernmoral philosophy, Pufendorf ’s conception of sovereignty holds thatthe state’s rights and powers are not delegated to it on the conditionthat it realise man’s moral being, but only so that it might preservesecurity, which is thus the only legitimate end of the state. In his discus-sion of the prince’s right to dispose over religious adiaphora – all aspects

From moral philosophy to political jurisprudence

of religion not necessary for salvation – Thomasius follows Pufendorfto the letter:

Because they concern the fundamental laws of particular republics, throughwhich the exercise of sovereign territorial government is observed and limited,the rights to which a prince is entitled in religious matters, in accordance withthe law of nature and the properties of sovereign government, can best be dis-cussed in relation to the ultimate end of republics and the causes from whichthey arise. The ultimate end of the republic in this ruined condition is that thesubjects need it for protection against the evil and cunning attacks of otherpeople, to which they were prey in the state of nature from their more power-ful neighbours. For apart from God there is no more powerful means to curbhuman evil and to attain security than this wise invention: that many men bymeans of a pact subordinate their will and their power to the will of another,for the common benefit of the whole community of subjects. Without doubt,then, a prince must be entitled to as much power as is required for attaining theultimate end of the republic; that is, for [attaining] its internal and externalcalm and peace. (RFM, § , –)

To the extent that it now finds its end solely in preserving the security ofa territorial population, all coercive power – all right to make law andwar – belongs to the civil sovereign alone. Moreover, to the extent thatit disturbs the republic, the prince is justified in using this power againstall kinds of conduct, religious as well as worldly; for, as a recent periodof religious civil war has shown, religious conduct can also cause greatharm to the commonwealth:

Is it not shown in Germany and all the kingdoms of Europe what kind of dis-aster and injury comes from religious conflict and rebellion? Were the power tosuppress such disturbance as arises from religion now to be removed from theprince, so the whole republic would certainly be ruined. Therefore, to my wayof thinking, they reason correctly and prudently who say: That in so far as itstands in their free will, all conduct of subjects – both natural and moral – issubject to the power of the prince . . . Because damage to the republic can arisefrom all such conduct of subjects. (RFM, § , –)

In combining statist sovereignty doctrine and spiritualistic theology,Thomasius’ political jurisprudence of church governance gives rise to afar-reaching programme for deconfessionalising the church and thestate. In the first place, by construing all religious ceremonies as ‘middle-things’ or adiaphora – that is, things neither commanded nor forbiddenby divine or natural law – he is able to bring the entirety of church lawand liturgy within the supervision of the territorial sovereign, giving riseto a conception of church governance known as ‘territorialism’(Schlaich ). In the lengthy discussion that comprises the seventh

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chapter of the second volume of the Vollständige Erläuterung, Thomasiusapplies the category of adiaphora to all the central sacraments of thechurch. Here he treats baptism, catechisation, the Eucharist, confession,exorcism, marriage, and ordination as ceremonies inessential to inner‘saving’ religion, hence as open to the sovereign’s supervision, shouldthey give rise to uncivil conduct (VKR, ., –). As for the compet-ing theological doctrines of the three major confessions and the varioussects, the prince should endorse none of them; for their intellectual andcompulsory nature make them all equally distant from the genuine relig-ion of those who seek salvation in ‘simple active Christianity’. Politicalprudence dictates, however, that the prince steer his public pronounce-ments mid-way between the extreme ritualism of the Catholics andorthodox Lutherans, and the equally extreme spiritualism of theQuakers and other illuminati. The only public religion suited to both truepiety and the desacralised state is natural religion. This is a religionwhose few simple propositions – that there is a God, that Christ teachesus to love God and our neighbour – both agree with true Christianityand are accessible to natural reason, yet do not give rise to any relig-ious–civil rights that might subtract from secular sovereignty. The spiri-tualisation of religion in Thomasius’ Staatskirchenrecht is thus reciprocallyrelated to his secularisation of the visible church.

At the same time, however, the prince may not exercise his supervi-sion of religion on the basis of his own insight into moral truth, or inorder to make his subjects holy. Instead, in keeping with the rest of thestate’s sovereign powers, the prince’s right over religion must be exer-cised solely in accordance with the end of civil security, against conductthreatening social peace. On the basis of this construction of the state’sreligious neutrality, or indifference to transcendent truth, Thomasiuswas able to develop one of the most far-reaching of all the early moderndoctrines of religious toleration. Using injury to civil peace as his solecriterion for state intervention in religious affairs, he is able to extend thethreshold of toleration beyond the Protestant churches to include sectsharbouring heterodox conceptions of the Trinity and mediation.Thomasius thus offers the following fundamental criticism of thedemand by Leipzig’s leading controversial theologian – J. B. Carpzov –that Socinians and Arians be treated as criminal heretics:

Disagreement as such does not disturb the tranquillity of the republic – eventhough the Socinians say that Christ is not truly God, or the Arians that Christis not co-eternal with the Father . . . Of course it cannot be denied that herethey err gravely, especially because they fail to recognise their own misery. But

From moral philosophy to political jurisprudence

why should the prince force them into exile? Such people can still also be goodand honourable citizens. They give the prince their taxes and obey his com-mands, make good soldiers, and so on. It is not they who disturb the republicbut the intemperate geniuses [i.e., controversial theologians like Carpzov], whomoan and complain about each other . . . . (VKR, , p. )

Further, on the same basis, Thomasius was able move beyond bothLocke’s refusal to extend toleration to atheists, and Locke’s andPufendorf ’s unwillingness to offer it to Catholics. Locke had claimedthat atheists could not be trusted to honour oaths, and both he andPufendorf argued that Catholics, in owing allegiance to a foreignmonarch, could not be good citizens of the territorial state. Thomasius’remarkable account of his own change of mind on these questions war-rants an extended quotation:

Religions as such do not disturb external peace, and where their teachings areso disposed [to tranquillity], then the prince can well tolerate them. For thosewho deny the Trinity do not immediately disturb the state. Where, though, suchpeople do disturb the state, then the prince’s duty (Officium Principis) demandsthat he expel them from the republic. In fact, in the past I maintained thatnothing could be more injurious to the republic than atheism. Now, though, Irecognise this to be false. Who then may not be tolerated in the republic? Ourauthor [Pufendorf] responds: the papists – because they say that a princebelonging to another religion may be killed in good conscience, and that here-tics may not defend the faith. These principles are against the law and disturbthe republic – as one has seen in France – which means that they should not betolerated. For my part, I will not here inquire into the facts of the case, whichare no doubt deserving of respect. Nonetheless, we must not impute the prin-ciples of the Jesuits to everyone. And if a prince were to act on the basis thatdisturbance could arise from a doctrine as a matter of probable consequence,he would tolerate no religion; for the Lutheran religion can also give occasionto turbulence as a matter of consequence. Those who say that true religion iscontrary to state utility delude themselves, and we therefore maintain that no-one should be exiled on the grounds of [religious] disagreement. (VKR, ,–)

Through this dual strategy – of spiritualising religion by secularising thevisible church, and desacralising the state by establishing its religiousneutrality – Thomasius establishes a threshold for the state’s interven-tion in the church which varies with religion’s capacity to damage civilsociety. This marks an important advance on the threshold used in theDe Habitu. Here Pufendorf had attempted to draw a firm line betweenthe internal order of the church which should be left to the clergy(liturgy, sacraments), and the external order open to control by the

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

prince through the Consistory (appointment of priests, funding, andadministration of church property) (DHR, –). The problem with thissolution, Thomasius argues, is that it leads to irresolvable argument overwhether a certain matter should be regarded as internal or external,thereby paralysing the state’s capacity for political action.

The two cases that Thomasius uses to exemplify this argument in theRecht in Mitteldingen indicate both the kind of problem his floating thresh-old was intended to address and its success in doing so. Consider thecase, says Thomasius, of a Catholic prince who, after the Treaty ofWestphalia, finds himself ruling over a territory inside whose Lutheranchurches the congregations are singing hymns extolling the Pope’smurder. The question of whether the prince has the right to suppress thisconduct cannot be solved via the distinction between the internal andexternal governance of the church; for this case can be argued passion-ately on both sides, depending on how hymn-singing is classified. UsingThomasius’ threshold, however, the prince can readily be assigned thisright, regardless of whether hymns are normally seen as belonging to theinternal liturgical order of the church; for this is conduct that fomentscommunal hatreds and thereby damages civil peace (RFM, § , –).

At the same time, however, the sovereign must not attempt to exercisethis right on the basis of his religious persona or in a manner that coercesthe conscience of his citizens. This is the point of the second example,which concerns the question – much disputed by the ‘doctors’ – ofwhether Protestant princes have the right to compel their Jewish subjectsto attend Christian worship. Again, this case had proved irresolvableusing the internal–external division, due to the lack of agreement overhow to classify church services. And again, Thomasius’ floating thresh-old provides an unambiguous resolution, this time denying the right:

The rule we have provided above decides the matter quite clearly. Since toattend the churches and participate in the worship of the Christians appearsunjust and aggravating to the Jews, and since it is of no assistance to the peaceand calm of the country, so one should not compel their conscience. Thoughtheir conscience is erroneous, it will not be helped from error through compul-sion, but only if one associates with them in a friendly manner, providing themwith a good example so that they might better agree with reason and the teach-ings of Christ. (RFM, § , –)

In short, given their indifference to salvation, all religious ceremonies arepotential objects of political supervision. Yet whether they meet with tol-eration or suppression must in no way depend upon the state’s religious

From moral philosophy to political jurisprudence

or moral ideology, being determined instead by the sole criterion of civildisturbance.

The mixture of spiritualist theology and statist politics informingThomasius’ Pufendorfian Staatskirchenrecht presents the post-Kantianhistory of moral philosophy with insurmountable difficulties. Writtenfrom the standpoint of its own (neo-Kantian or neo-Aristotelian) moralanthropology, this historiography continues to derive political rightsfrom a theory of moral personality or moral community, and it imaginesthat civil society resulted from the extension of reason and democracy.It is thus predisposed to assimilate Pufendorfian Staatskirchenrecht to moralphilosophy, either by treating it as the expression of a particular moralanthropology, or by criticising it for its ‘unreconciled’ spiritualist andstatist aspects. In her discussion of Pufendorf ’s construction of naturalreligion and religious toleration, Simone Zurbuchen ignores his doctrineof imposed moral offices, and, drawing on Denzer, interprets Pufendorfas advancing an Aristotelian conception of the state as the ‘natural’vehicle of man’s moral perfection and moral community (Zurbuchen, ). On this basis, Zurbuchen makes Pufendorf ’s doctrine ofnatural religion into the foundation of his natural law – instead of theother way around – thereby treating political obligation as an expressionof the commands of natural religion. Seen in this light, Pufendorf ’s doc-trine of religious toleration appears as the recognition of a subjectiveright to religious self-realisation, rather than as a means of desacralisingthe state by eliminating the civil power of the church. Consequently,Zurbuchen treats Pufendorf ’s statist defence of the sovereign’s right tosupervise the church as a deviation, induced by reason of state doctrine(Zurbuchen , ).

We have already dealt with modern attempts to assimilate Pufendorf ’sconstruction of political authority to neo-Kantian and neo-Aristotelianmoral anthropologies (.). Through his doctrine of imposed offices,Pufendorf was able to detach sovereignty from its moral ties – to self-leg-islating reason or the self-perfecting community – and ground it insteadin sovereign commands issued in accordance with the end of security. Farfrom representing an anomaly or contradiction in Pufendorf ’s andThomasius’ thought, their simultaneous advocacy of religious tolerationand the political supervision of religion indicates that these were recipro-cating strategies grounded in the end of security and oriented to the de-sacralisation of politics. In making Pufendorf ’s doctrine of imposedmoral offices central to his Staatskirchenrecht, Thomasius was not attempt-ing to provide any kind of moral philosophical basis for the state’s super-

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

vision of religious authority. Rather, in using it to separate the offices ofruler and subject, teacher and auditor, he was attempting to combat thedominant Lutheran doctrines of church governance, which weredesigned to maintain the independent civil power of the church.

We recall that, in contrast with Pufendorf ’s officio doctrine, the neo-scholastic metaphysics of the person unites all offices and duties in a corerational substance or imago Dei, modelled on the unity of Christ’s naturesand offices in his personal substance. In this regard at least, by continu-ing to ground civil power in moral personhood, modern moral philoso-phy remains affiliated to the metaphysics of the person that Pufendorfand Thomasius set out to destroy. As we have already observed, in bothneoscholastic and rationalist natural metaphysics, this Christian meta-physics of the person was used to support the merging of religious andpolitical offices required to maintain clerical power in confessional soci-eties. This provides the setting in which Thomasius did battle with thecentral doctrines of Lutheran church law.

This interdependency of Christian metaphysical personalism andconfessional political theology is evident in the central doctrines ofLutheran ecclesiology and church law. Schlaich discusses several suchdoctrines, three of which are of particular importance for us (Schlaich, –). First, the ‘three-estate doctrine’ (Dreiständlehre) taught thatthe church consists of three Stände or statuses: the princely, clerical, andpopular estates (status politicus, ecclesiasticus und popularis). In thus superim-posing the three traditional social estates – the governing, teaching, andpopular estates – on the order of the church, it forms a theory of thechurch that doubles as a theory of politics and society. In fact, in propos-ing that the three estates are unified in the church as Christ’s mysticalbody, this doctrine is a means of showing that civil and religious author-ity are harmonised in a single end – the governance of the moral com-munity – which has to be shared between the prince and the clergy. TheDreiständlehre was closely associated with the second doctrine, which elab-orated a sharp distinction between the inner and outer governance ofthe church. This, as we have already observed, was intended to reservecertain ecclesiastical powers – preaching, administration of sacraments,the ‘power of the keys’ – solely to the clergy, while confining the prince’srole to the external administration and defence of the church. Finally,the ‘two-person doctrine’ (Zwei-Personen-Lehre) taught that just as Christ’sperson united his divine and human natures, so too the ruler united twopersonae, those of bishop and civil sovereign. This allowed legal theolo-gians to argue that the prince receives his rights from two different

From moral philosophy to political jurisprudence

sources, Imperial canon law and territorial Staatsrecht. The prince’s epis-copal rights should therefore limit his exercise of territorial sovereignty,while this exercise should in turn be governed by the purpose of his epis-copal office, the defence of the faith. In all three doctrines, by establish-ing the interdependency of civil and religious offices, the metaphysicalconceptions of the integral person and the moral community (church)offered religious intellectuals a weapon to combat the complete absorp-tion of their estate powers into the summum imperium of the sovereign ter-ritorial state.

In using Pufendorf ’s conception of differentiated moral offices to crit-icise these doctrines, Thomasius’ Das Recht evangelischer Fürsten in theologis-chen Streitigkeiten shows that civil philosophy’s attack on the Christianmetaphysics of the person represents something far more momentousthan a conflict between rival moral philosophies. Written in response toCarpzov’s attempt to restrict the state’s capacity to intervene in religiouscontroversies, this disputation again reveals the degree to which theattack on university metaphysics was central not only to the desacralisa-tion of political culture, but also to the political subordination of theclerical estate to the territorial state. In arguing that, as part of thechurch’s ‘teaching estate’, orthodox theology faculties possess the civiljurisdiction to decide theological controversies – and in further arguingthat the prince, by virtue of his joint episcopal and civil personae, has aduty to compel church attendance – Carpzov demonstrates typicalorthodox uses of the Dreiständlehre and the two-persons doctrine.Thomasius’ attack on these arguments provides an object lesson in thehistorical role of Pufendorf ’s doctrine of imposed moral entities, and hisnatural law more generally.

In the first place, argues Thomasius, Carpzov is wrong to claim thatthe church consists of the political, clerical, and popular estates; for thesestatuses pertain to the civil state and not the spiritual community, whichconsists only of the statuses of teacher and auditor:

Here all the other ends pertaining to man cease. Hence just as it would be illog-ical for me to take the Christian church – which contains nobles and non-noblesin a spiritual community – and wish to divide it into the noble and non-noble,so it is also inept if one says that the Christian church consists of the civil author-ity, teachers and subjects; because these are moral entities not regarded in theChristian church. And, in this respect and purpose, the first and last of thesepersons would be relinquished, in that they pertain only to the worldly state,while on the other hand in the church they are considered only as auditors.(RFS, )

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

Given that the persons of subject and ruler do not exist in the church –given that here there is no civil authority – Carpzov has no grounds forclaiming that theologians possess the civil authority to adjudicate publictheological controversies.

Next, the fact that the individual who is prince may also be a memberof the church, does not mean that he represents his princely persona inthe church. Citing Pufendorf as his authority, Thomasius insists that: ‘Itis a known fact that an individual may represent several personae inaccordance with the different offices he bears’ (RFS, ). The doctrinethat the prince unites a religious and a civil persona – bishop and sove-reign – within a single capacity is thus based on a confusion. Instead, theprince is the bearer of three statuses, each of which imposes its ownduties. As a man, the prince is like all men in being bound by the naturallaw of sociable love for his fellow man. As a Christian the prince is boundto observe the laws of Christianity and, in recognising the commonmisery of the human race, to trust in the redeemer and hope to acquire‘a true living faith’, which consists in the living of a good life. As a prince,however, the prince’s only duty is to maintain the public peace andsecurity of his subjects, using appropriate means of compulsion (RFS,–). This means that the prince’s sovereign right of religious supervi-sion may not be divided or limited, as if his religious persona had someshare in it: ‘If one observes that rights in religious matters are just asmuch a part of sovereign majesty as other regalia [royal rights], flowingfrom the same source as the others, then one would not come to this two-fold consideration of the prince’ (RFS, ).

At the same, however – testifying to the ‘liberal’ wing of Thomasius’desacralising strategy – this division of offices also means that the princemay not seek to fulfil religious duties in his civil person. As subjects of adesacralising state, citizens should not be required to be holy, only law-abiding: ‘From this end [social peace] one learns the duties of the princequite clearly . . . And given this end it is not necessary that subjects ded-icate their whole hearts to the cultivation of virtue . . ., but it is enoughfor this that they refrain from external vice to the extent that it disturbsthe peace’ (RFS, ). Given that the state’s rights and powers reach nofurther than the preservation of external peace, then the prince must notattempt to rule in such a way as to make his subjects holy:

Now it follows . . . that the duty of a prince goes no further than external peace;and if he preserves this among the subjects then he has fulfilled his duty. Iftherefore he wishes to go further, then he manifests himself in the person of a

From moral philosophy to political jurisprudence

man or a Christian, in which capacities, though, a prince may use no coerciveforce, but only the sound reason and Christianity that each man and Christianmay use in relation to those he seeks to lead to the right path. (RFS, –)

Hence, while the prince has the right to compel the termination ofpublic theological disputes he may do so only in accordance with hispolitical office – that is, only when they threaten civil order. This meansthat he must do so in complete disregard of the truth or falsity of thecontending doctrines. Otherwise, he must leave his subjects to resolvesuch matters through their own reason, in their capacities as teachersand auditors; for, just as the laws of grammar lie beyond the prince’s civilauthority, so too do religious truths (RFS, –).

It should already be clear that the tremors from this reconstruction ofthe moral and political landscape would shake cultural precincts wellbeyond those of Lutheran orthodoxy. If transcendent truths play no rolein the renovation of man’s will, and if the legitimacy of political rule isdependent on the sovereign eschewing all interest in transcendent truths,then it is not only religious doctrine that must be excluded from thesphere of political authority. So too must metaphysical ethics and,indeed, the domain of academic practical philosophy more generally;for it also teaches that man’s perfection is intellectual and that the end ofpolitics is tied to man’s moral completion. As we have seen, Thomasiuswas acutely aware that it was not just in moral theology that civil dutieswere held to be dependent on adherence to true intellectual doctrine andthe doctrine of the true intellect. This also occurred in those rationalistphilosophical doctrines which taught that man accedes to this civil dutiesthrough contemplation of pure concepts of goodness and justice, andthat man could come to govern his own conduct through the perfectionof his intellect (VKR, , –). For, in teaching that the exercise of civilgovernance should be grounded in the pursuit of moral perfection, thesedoctrines continued to reserve a place for the morally perfect in the exer-cise of civil power. This accounts for the drive to harmonise the figuresof the sage and the prince – philosophy and government – in the wholeline of metaphysical philosophy that stretches from Leibniz throughWolff to Kant and beyond.

As the direct inheritor of this lineage, modern (neo-Aristotelian andneo-Kantian) moral philosophy continues to treat politics as groundedin and limited by the need to realise moral personality. In imagining thatpolitical society might one day converge with moral community, moralphilosophy maintains the church as a political concept; and in insistingthat the moral exercise of civil authority requires the co-operation of

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

philosophers and statesmen, it harbours the image of the political sage.As a result, while moral philosophy honours one half of Pufendorf ’sformula for civil society – that there is no civil jurisdiction over truth – itrepresses the other half: that truth should have no civil jurisdiction. Thisis because it continues to teach that the legitimacy of governmentdepends upon realising the moral personality or moral community,which requires the political actualisation of moral philosophy. It hasbeen argued that this failure to observe the separation of political andmoral governance can imbue rationalist philosophy with an intolerantcultural and political demeanour (Koselleck ).

As we have noted (..), Leibniz’s attack on Thomasius’ decriminal-isation of heresy – in which he insists on error remaining punishable asthe condition of building a society based on truth – shows that thisproblem is more than just a theoretical possibility. If Leibniz continuedto regard heresy as a crime that is because, for rationalist metaphysics,civil duties are acceded to through personal insight into moral ideas, andcivil governance is conditional on moral self-governance. In thusgrounding civil and transcendental–moral duties in a single source – thepractice of contemplative self-governance – metaphysical ethics prom-ises to redeem political compulsion through the recovery of its justifyingmoral principles; yet, in doing so, threatens to make these principlespolitically compulsory. As we shall now see, it was not Leibniz but Kantwho rescued political metaphysics and political eschatology from theonslaught launched by Pufendorf ’s and Thomasius’ civil philosophy. Itwas Kant who showed moral philosophers how to re-enter the domainof political governance from which they had been expelled. They wouldreturn not as a clerical estate possessing its own share of civil authority,but as a clerisy of academic intellectuals, claiming powers from a sourcehigher than the end of social peace – ‘critical reason’.

: , ,

In Christian Wolff (–) published his Vernünftige Gedanken vonGott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt (RationalThoughts on God, the World, the Human Soul, and all Things in General), usuallyreferred to as the German Metaphysics. Occurring eight years beforeThomasius’ death and four years before Kant’s birth, this publicationsignalled the return of a full-blooded metaphysical scholasticism to theProtestant university, in fact to the University of Halle where Thomasiusremained a leading figure. Despite its occasional appeal to Cartesian

Afterword: Thomasius, Wolff, and the Pietists

method, Wolff’s German Metaphysics represents an elaboration andsystematisation of Leibniz’s metaphysics. While paying less attention toLeibniz’s monadology and doctrine of pre-established harmony, Wolffdraws directly on his mentor’s principles of contradiction and sufficientreason, treating them as the means by which the philosopher abstractsfrom empirical appearances and ascends to the pure concepts or divineperfections that contain the possibility of things.

The German Metaphysics thus possesses the same theo-rationalist char-acter as Leibniz’s Discourse on Metaphysics, with Wolff treating the worldas the mirror of the divine perfections and its creatures as reflections ofthe divine intellect: ‘And after that nothing remains than that the worldrepresents God’s perfections as in a mirror. This is the intention whichGod can realise through the world, and one is wont to call it theglorification or splendour of God: that one may therefore say, God hasmade the world for the sake of his glory’ (GM, § , ). Using aScotist interpretation of the principle of contradiction – as the lawthrough which a divine intellect joins atomic possibilia into the conceptsof empirically possible things – Wolff improvised his own version of thetraditional scholastic conception of metaphysics, calling it ‘the scienceof the possible as possible’. For their part, the empirical or ‘historical’sciences represent a less exalted level of the metaphysical hierarchy. LikeAlbertus Magnus, Wolff treats these sciences as apprehending the possi-bilia not as they issue timelessly from the divine intellect, but only in theobscure and fragmentary form in which they are given to the humansenses in time. Moreover, by treating God, too, as bound by the laws ofintelligible possibility, Wolff could entertain the rationalist conjecturethat the laws of the universe would remain whether God existed or not.We need to recall however that, despite the common interpretation of itas symptomatic of the secularisation of metaphysics, this conjecture wasin fact a standard anti-voluntarist trope of theo-rational metaphysics(Tierney , –).

If Wolff’s German Metaphysics represents the transformation ofLeibniz’s metaphysical sketches into a full-blown rationalist scholasti-cism, then the ethical, theological, and political outworkings of this doc-trine are also strikingly similar to those adumbrated by Leibniz. Wolff’sGerman Ethics – the Vernünftige Gedanken von der menschen Tun und Lassen zuBeförderung ihrer Glückseeligkeit (Rational Thoughts on Human Conduct, for thePromotion of his Happiness) – may be regarded as an elaboration ofLeibniz’s metaphysical conception of morality. Like his predecessor,Wolff treats the contemplation of the divine perfections or concepts as

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the means by which humans perfect their intellectual natures, therebyaspiring to a condition of rational self-purification in which rationalconduct and felicity are one and the same. He leaves us in no doubt asto the theo-rational character of this construction of morality:

Because a rational man is a law to himself and apart from natural obligationneeds no other, so neither rewards nor punishments motivate him to goodactions and to the avoidance of evil ones. And therefore a rational [man]accomplishes the good because it is good, and refrains from the evil because itis evil: in which case he will be similar to God, who has no superior to obligatehim to do the good and refrain from the evil, but does the former and refrainsfrom the latter through the perfection of his nature. (GE, §, pp. –)

Even more so than Leibniz, Wolff conceived rationalist metaphysics asan alternative religion. In treating the purifying ascent to the divine per-fections not just as the key to natural theology but also as the foundationof a civil religion – one capable of overcoming confessional division andreunifying Christendom – Wolff rendered explicit the quasi-religiouscharacter of his mentor’s metaphysics.

Finally, in his German Politics – or Vernünftige Gedanken von dem gesellschaft-lichen Leben der Menschen und insonderheit dem gemeinen Wesen (Rational Thoughtson the Social Life of Man and in particular the Republic, ) – Wolff revealsthe consequences of using Leibniz’s metaphysics to interpret the politi-cal pact and the formation of the state. As might be expected, he treatsthe political pact as the contract through which men enter into societyon the condition that the state will perfect their intellectual nature (GP,§ –, –). Wolff thus ignores Pufendorf ’s focus on the imposition ofcivil sovereignty as the means of achieving security, endorsing insteadthe moral–teleological conception of the state mis-ascribed to Pufendorfby his neo-Aristotelian interpreters. In keeping with this conception ofthe state, Wolff conceives civil authority as unifying the ‘two persons’ ofthe sage and the prince, as outlined in his essay Von den Regenten, die sichWeltweisheit befleistigen, und von den Weltweisen, die das Regiment führen (OnPrinces who Cultivate Philosophy, and on Philosophers who Direct Government,). Here Wolff adduces two main arguments for grounding the exer-cise of civil sovereignty in philosophical knowledge and its transcendenttruth. First, considering that like all empirical phenomena the state ismerely the sensory appearance of transcendent concepts, and given thatonly the metaphysician has full access to these, then only the sage maydetermine the true end of the state – namely, the perfection of man’sintellectual nature (VRW, –). Second, as the true direction ofgovernment requires a ruler who has purified himself of all self-interest

Afterword: Thomasius, Wolff, and the Pietists

and thereby acts on the basis of rational insight alone, only the meta-physical sage is in a position to direct the government (VRW, –).

Having established the metaphysical continuum between the pursuitof moral perfection and the exercise of civil power, Wolff is able to justifythe use of civil coercion to compel this perfection, demanding not justthat Deists and atheists be stripped of their citizenship, but also thatbooks be censored and religious worship be made compulsory (Dreitzel, ). Even more indicative of the neo-confessional character ofWolff’s metaphysical programme is that fact that, in his natural law, heseeks to make natural religion itself politically compulsory (Link ,). Unlike the natural religion developed by Pufendorf and Thomasius,Wolff’s is not a minimalist theology subordinate to the end of socialpeace. Rather it is a fully fledged civil religion grounded in the truth ofWolff’s natural theology, again fulfilling the tendency towards a compul-sory metaphysical religion that we noted in Leibniz.

Given the completeness of the opposition between Thomasian civilphilosophy and Wolffian metaphysics – beginning with their rival con-ceptions of philosophy and its relation to theology, reflected in their fun-damentally different ethical and natural law doctrines, and issuingfinally in radically opposed conceptions of the relation between politicsand transcendent morality – we should not be surprised that they cameinto conflict at Halle. Despite their private animosity, however – Wolffdescribing Thomasius as a mathematical ‘idiot’ in a letter to Leibniz –this was a war carried out by proxy, through the followers rather thanthe masters themselves. As Arndt has shown, the conflict betweenHalle’s Thomasians and Wolffians occurred earlier than and indepen-dent of that between Wolff and the Pietists, beginning in , wellbefore Wolff officially launched his metaphysical programme, and trig-gered by his defence of mathematical method in philosophy (Arndt). Still, even at this stage, it was the metaphysical grounding andclaims of Wolff’s mathematical method – his treatment of it as an arscombinatoria capable of determining the possibilia of the objects of all thesciences – that aroused the opposition of Thomasius’ followers.

Yet, for all their interest as pointers to the ongoing struggle betweenthe ‘rival enlightenments’, these skirmishes between the Wolffians andThomasians were only a curtain-raiser to the major attack on Wolff’smetaphysics – that launched by the Halle Pietists in (Hinrichs ,–). The Pietist campaign was led by Joachim Lange, an able con-troversialist, and Johann Francis Budde(us), who would become one of

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Pietism’s leading theologians and a representative of the ‘theologicalenlightenment’ (Bianco ; Sparn ).

Despite the comprehensive nature of their attack on what they chris-tened the ‘Leibniz–Wolff philosophy’, Lange and Budde singled out twoaspects of Wolff’s metaphysics for special attention. First, they targetedthe ‘fatalism’ of Wolff’s metaphysical cosmology. According to Budde, intreating divine intellection as the source of the intelligible substanceswhile simultaneously treating God’s will as bound by the logic of choos-ing the best possible set of relations between these substances – the ‘bestpossible world’ – Wolff’s metaphysics subordinates the divine will tocosmic necessity. Not only does this appear to make God responsible forthe world’s evil, it also deprives human action of the freedom necessaryfor sin, responsibility, and justification (Budde , –, –,–). Secondly, the Pietists took issue with Wolff’s metaphysicalanthropology. Here, Budde argues, in adopting Leibniz’s bifurcated doc-trine of the active intellectual soul and the passive senses, together withthe associated doctrine of the pre-established harmony of soul and body,Wolff’s anthropology is completely inimical to Christian morality. Onthe one hand, Wolff’s anthropology continues the fatalism of his cosmol-ogy by denying the soul’s capacity to control the body, leading all itsactions to be treated as predetermined through their prior harmonisa-tion with those of the body, and depriving man of the free will requiredfor the imputation of sin. On the other hand, by treating the soul orintellect as perfecting itself through self-conformation to the laws ofnatural perfection, Wolff’s metaphysics excludes divine will and gracefrom the determination of morality, allowing humans to regeneratethemselves through their natural rational capacities (Budde , –,–, –).

In short, Lange and Budde were reactivating some of the classic argu-ments of Lutheran voluntarist theology, hostile to both monistic philo-sophical conceptions of God’s relation to the world, and to the ‘Pelagian’doctrine that man might regenerate himself through philosophical self-purification, without need of the means of grace provided by Christianfaith. Moreover, they were directing these arguments against ametaphysical philosophy which, we have argued (.), was itself theproduct of a Platonistic modification of seventeenth-century LutheranSchulmetaphysik. In the event, after a protracted intellectual and politicalbattle – involving both sides making representations to the court inBerlin, the appointment of an investigative commission, and the direct

Afterword: Thomasius, Wolff, and the Pietists

participation of the cabinet and Friedrich Wilhelm I – the controversyended in November , with Wolff’s dismissal from the university andexiling from Brandenburg-Prussia by royal decree (Hinrichs ,–).

If the conflict between Thomasians and Wolffians offers us a furtherwindow onto the conflict between civil and metaphysical philosophy,then Wolff’s battle with the Pietists is indicative of the longstandingconflict between Lutheranism’s metaphysical and voluntarist wings. TheHalle events thus provide us with a snapshot of the German academy’s‘intellectual civil war’ as this passed into the eighteenth century. With thenotable exception of Hinrichs’ valuable study, however, the standardinterpretations of these events fail to reveal their historical significance.

For a long time Wolff’s exiling was interpreted as a victory of religiousobscurantism over philosophical Enlightenment – a victory soon to bereversed, with the great philosopher’s triumphant return to Halle in at the request of the enlightened Frederick II (Beck , ; Zeller). The inadequacy of this interpretation should already be clear. Intreating Wolffian doctrine as grounded in secular reason as opposed toreligious authority, it overlooks the cultural and religious dimension ofWolff’s metaphysics, thereby misunderstanding the character of thePietist opposition to it. In presenting his metaphysics as an integralanthropology and cosmology, holding the key to both personal regener-ation and socio-moral renewal, Wolff was responsible for launchingmetaphysics as an academic religion. Attuned to the manner in whichLeibniz’s metaphysics transferred the formerly esoteric authority ofmetaphysical holiness to the secular philosopher, Wolff took this adum-bration and actualised it at the level of the university curriculum. Farfrom representing the reaction of religious obscurantism to rationalistenlightenment, then, Lange and Budde were engaging Wolff on a sharedground, countering his intellectualist anthropology and cosmology withtheir own voluntarist kind. Even though their doctrine was oriented tothe inward search for the signs of grace and rebirth, while Wolff’s wasintended to induce self-purifying philosophical ascent to contemplationof the intelligibles, both were in fact spiritual disciplines administered tooverlapping intellectual elites as exercises in moral regeneration.

For this reason, we should also be sceptical of a second longstandinginterpretation of the Halle events, which unites Thomasius and thePietists in a line of ‘Thomasian–Pietist’ philosophy – Rüdiger, Hoff-mann, Crusius (Carboncini ; Tonelli ; Tonelli ). There is ofcourse some justification for this linkage, as Thomasian and Pietist

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

thought overlap through a common ‘spiritualist’ anti-metaphysicaltheology, and in their shared hostility to metaphysical cosmology andanthropology, with its intellectualist conception of a philosophical pathto moral regeneration. Nonetheless, it is misleading to treat this overlapas the source of a Thomasian–Pietist philosophy. As we have seen,Thomasius’ spiritualist theology has a quite different organisation andaim to the Pietist version, being partnered by a statist conception ofpolitical governance, and being directed towards the privatisation offaith, rather than the Pietist’s general reformation of society. To see this,we need only take note of the Pietist’s attack on Thomasius’ decorumdoctrine; for in separating the cultivation of decorum from the pursuitof moral regeneration – treating the former as suited to a ‘decent publiclife’ in civil society and the latter as a matter of private faith and grace– Thomasius was rejecting the claims of Pietist fideism to provide asingle foundation for civil and religious governance; just as he rejectedthe analogous claims made by the rationalist metaphysicians (Hinrichs, –). Further, we can observe that, unlike Crusius, Thomasiuswas not interested in harmonising academic philosophy and voluntaristtheology. On the contrary, he explicitly rejected this programme, seekingto reduce theology to the status of an informulable private faith, and toreturn philosophy to its role as a propaedeutic training in the liberal arts.Thomasius was not a philosopher in this sense, but a political jurist whorealised that Protestant scholasticism was wholly unsuited to the ethicaland professional preparation of the young jurists and politici of a decon-fessionalised state.

In this context we should recall our earlier discussion of the limits ofpost-Kantian dialectical treatments of the conflict between theThomasians and Wolffians (pp. –). In treating Thomasius andWolff as representatives of reciprocally deficient philosophical theories– a voluntarism that leads to political utilitarianism and a rationalismlacking all grounding in empirical experience – this approach uprootsthe rival intellectual cultures from their ascetic and institutional con-ditions, turning them into mere actors in the theatre of Kantiandialectics (Schmidt-Biggemann a, –; Schmidt-Biggemann ;Schneiders b; Schneiders , –).

In fact, this tendency to remove the rival intellectual cultures fromtheir institutional settings and political orientations is common to allthree of the above interpretations of the Halle events. In addition toreducing the conflicting institutional cultures to mere ideas, this deraci-nation has the effect of creating homogeneous epochs on the basis of the

Afterword: Thomasius, Wolff, and the Pietists

rise and fall of theories. As we have already noted, this gives rise to thestandard periodisation of early modern German philosophy. Accordingto this periodisation, the philosophical dominance of Thomasian volun-tarism characteristic of the first two decades of the century ends with itseclipse by Wolffian rationalism in the s. This is followed by amelding of Thomasian and Wolffian perspectives in mid-centuryPopularphilosophie; which is in turn superseded by Kant’s definitivetranscendence of the key oppositions in the s (Schneiders b).We can conclude our discussion of Thomasius and open the door to ourdiscussion of Kant by indicating the inadequacy of this intellectualistand ‘epochalist’ treatment of the Halle conflicts.

First, we recall that Pufendorfian and Thomasian civil philosophy didnot undergo some kind of universal supersession in the s. In fact itremained powerful in Protestant Germany’s leading law faculties – Halleand Göttingen – well beyond this epochal boundary, due to its role in theacademic formation of jurists and political officials (Hammerstein ;Rüping ). In his illuminating account of the teaching of jurispru-dence at Königsberg during the first half of the century, Steven Lestitionoffers important pointers to the reasons for the continuing vitality ofPufendorf ’s and Thomasius’ natural law. In discussing the place ofGrotius, Pufendorf, and Thomasius in the foundation programme ofReinhold Sahme and the Königsberg jurists, Lestition suggests that theirrole was ‘to encourage students (and political actors and state-officials)to break free of “tutelage” by “scholastic” modes of thinking and aboveall to grasp the way in which the power of princely, territorial–state insti-tutions would end the heritage of religious strife and sectarianism’. Hefurther comments that this fostered ‘the renewal of juristic modes ofthought encouraging self-disciplining and a functional subordination todiverse roles on various levels below the prince’ (Lestition , ). Iftherefore Protestant Germany’s leading law faculties continued to teachPufendorfian and Thomasian civil philosophy long after its supposedeclipse by Wolffian metaphysics, this is because these rival philosophiesinteracted not as competing theories – only one of which could be true– but as rival intellectual cultures dedicated to the formation of partic-ular kinds of intellectual comportment.

Next, we may observe that if Pietism and Wolffian metaphysics alsointeracted as rival comportment formations – rather than as opposedtheories – then neither was their historical relation characterised by auniform epochal movement from the false to the true, or from religiousobscurantism to secular Enlightenment. This helps to account for the

Thomasius and the desacralisation of politics

otherwise scarcely explicable fact that after the period of initial warfareat Halle in the s, Wolffian metaphysics and Pietist theology under-went a culturally crucial process of convergence and hybridisation.Although we are not in a position to enter into a detailed discussion ofthis process here, we can shift the burden of proof back onto the stan-dard interpretation. For this argues that through its rationalist reconcil-iation of theology and philosophy, Wolffian metaphysics opened thedoor to a form of Lutheran theology – ‘Neology’ – seeking a ‘rational’or moral reinterpretation of the Christian mysteries (Aner , –;Beck , –).

As a consequence of our brief redescription of it, however, we maysuggest that it was the cultural and religious character of Wolffian meta-physics – its capacity to function as a spiritual discipline for the pursuitmoral regeneration and social reform – that permitted its convergencewith Pietism, which, unlike the new civil philosophy, was dedicated tojust these ends. This interpretation finds some confirmation in the factthat the Königsberg theologians and philosophers who pioneered themerging of Wolffianism and Pietism – particularly F. A. Schultz andMartin Knutzen – did so by improvising a series of doctrines that mini-mised the difference between Wolff’s rationalist ascent to the divine intel-ligibles and the Pietist regimen for spiritual rebirth through the innerpursuit of grace (Erdmann ; Hollmann ; Malter ). In thisnew cultural space – formed when a metaphysics aspiring to be a relig-ion entered into an alliance with a religion seeking a purely rationalmoral form – it would become possible to elaborate a metaphysicalmoral philosophy capable of functioning as ‘pure moral religion’ and,on this basis, to once again propose to rebuild society in the image of thechurch. The architect of this next renewal of metaphysics wasImmanuel Kant – heir to Wolff, protégé of Schultz and Knutzen, andalien to the ‘juristic civic consciousness’ Sahme and his successors wereforging in a faculty nearby but intellectually so far away.

Afterword: Thomasius, Wolff, and the Pietists

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

.

In this our final chapter we discuss Immanuel Kant’s practical philoso-phy – his metaphysics of morality, law, politics, and religion – in relationto the conflict between civil and metaphysical philosophy whose historywe have been essaying. Kant’s philosophy, we shall argue, represents thedecisive step in the modernisation of university metaphysics initiated byLeibniz, whose own embryonic programme had since been developedinto a new and all-embracing form of Protestant scholasticism byChristian Wolff. Despite its lack of direct engagement with the writingsof Pufendorf and Thomasius, Kant’s philosophy thus remains deeplyimplicated in the intellectual civil war that continued to rage betweenuniversity metaphysics and civil philosophy. Kant’s role in this conflict,however, has become very difficult for us to discern, as the modernhumanities academy is so saturated by Kantian styles of thought that wehave come to treat them as timeless. This dehistoricising of Kant isreflected in the debate over whether he may be regarded as a metaphy-sician at all, rather than as the philosopher who simply uncovered thesubjective conditions of human thought and morality (Gram ). It isalso reflected in those histories that see Kant’s philosophy as transcend-ing religious, political, and cultural conflict altogether – as ushering inan epoch of Enlightenment in which all the old divisions would give wayto a fully universal and autonomous conception of human reason, char-acterised by the virtues of Aufklärung, Selbstdenken, Perfektibilität: enlighten-ment, intellectual autonomy, perfectibility (Beck ; Beck ;Hinske ; Schneiders ).

It is not difficult to demonstrate the prima facie implausibility of thiskind of interpretation; for Kant’s practical philosophy is shaped at everypoint by a relentless and occasionally vehement rejection of the centraltenets and direction of civil philosophy of the Pufendorfian kind. This

rejection is manifest in Kant’s unstinting repudiation of all conceptionsof virtue that treat it as a restraint of conduct in accordance with theends of personal or civil happiness. The following attack on the concep-tion of virtue as outward conformation to prudential law – taken fromhis Religion within the Boundaries of Reason Alone – is typical:

Virtue here has the abiding maxim of lawful actions, no matter whence onedraws the incentives that the power of choice [Willkür] needs for such actions. . . But not the slightest change of heart is necessary for this; only a change ofmanners [Sitten]. A man here regards himself as virtuous whenever he feelshimself fortified in the maxims of observing his duty, but not by virtue of thesupreme ground of all maxims, namely duty itself. The immoderate man thusconverts to moderation for the sake of health; the liar to truth for the sake ofreputation; the unjust man to civil righteousness for the sake of peace or profit,and so on, all in conformity with the prized principle of happiness. (.; RRT,)

This criticism is, of course, a direct echo of Leibniz’s complaint thatPufendorf ’s ethics confines itself to merely lawful actions and ignoresinner motives. It is also strikingly similar to the ‘old theologian’s’ attackon Thomasius’ restriction of morality to management of the passions,in the course of which it is argued that ‘the theory of the virtues (throughwhich true happiness is attained) should also illuminate a man’s immor-tal soul with the brilliance of the true light of virtue, and implant therethese virtues so that the soul may turn to God . . . again ascending toreunite with him, once more able to appear worthy and capable beforeGod’ (KTS, ).

Kant’s attack on prudential ethics should thus serve to remind us thatit was the civil philosophers who had in fact sought to confine ethics to out-wardly lawful actions, rejecting all concern with inner motives. Further, itshould lead us to recall that Pufendorf and Thomasius had indeed createdan ethics and politics designed to convert the unjust to civil righteousnessfor the sake of social peace, regardless of purity of heart. After all, we havejust listened to Thomasius’ powerful argument against the political meta-physicians that, considering the end of civil rule is social peace, ‘it is notnecessary that subjects dedicate their whole hearts to the cultivation ofvirtue . . . but it is enough for this that they refrain from external vice to theextent that it disturbs the peace’ (RFS, ). Finally and above all, however,Kant’s attack should remind us that in restricting ethics to outward civil-ity regulated in accordance with the end of social peace, the civil philos-ophers were engaged in a profound struggle to desacralise politics anddeconfessionalise society – the struggle to uncouple civil authority from

Introduction

moral truth, the public pursuit of happiness from the private striving formoral regeneration. In short, despite what the modern Kantians say,Kant’s attack on the moral sufficiency of outward lawfulness and pruden-tial ethics allows us to approach him as heir to the main line of Germanuniversity metaphysics – including its constitutional hostility to civil phi-losophy – and hence as party to the ongoing attempt to resacralise thedomain of civil governance.

As in our discussions of Leibniz, Pufendorf, and Thomasius, in orderto arrive at an historical understanding of Kant’s philosophy we mustreturn it to the circumstances of cultural, political, and religious conflictin which it was fashioned. Four features of Kant’s historical circum-stances lend plausibility to our treatment of him as a university meta-physician who was constitutionally opposed to civil philosophy’sdetranscendentalising of ethics and desacralising of politics. In the firstplace, after attending a Pietist preparatory school in Königsberg, Kantwas trained by Wolffian philosophers at the university, and then spent hisentire adult life in the precincts of the University of Königsberg’s phi-losophy faculty; first as a student, then as lecturer (–), and finallyas professor of logic and metaphysics (–) (Stark ). UnlikeLeibniz, Kant did not know the life of the court savant. UnlikePufendorf ’s, his philosophy was not shaped by the role of political orjurisprudential adviser to government. Further, we have already notedthat Königsberg’s philosophy faculty was responsible for elaborating themodus vivendi between Pietist voluntarism and Wolffian rationalism. Inseeking to reconcile the cultures of moral rebirth and rationalist self-purification, Kant’s teachers, F. A. Schultz and Martin Knutzen, pro-vided the form in which he would inherit Schulmetaphysik (Erdmann ;Hollmann ; Malter ).

Secondly, if Kant was himself taught by Wolffian metaphysicians,then his own teaching was also heavily indebted to the Leibniz–Wolffinheritance. Kant’s lectures on metaphysics and moral philosophy werebased on the same two Wolffian compendia – A. G. Baumgarten’sMetaphysica () and Initia Philosophiae Practicae Primae () – through-out his long career. Kant was, of course, no slavish adherent of Wolffianrationalism. In fact his commentary on Baumgarten’s texts, published involumes and of the Akademie Ausgabe, shows that, while heexpounded them for his students, he used their divisions primarily as aplatform for his own metaphysical and moral philosophising. This isborne out by the surviving transcripts of Kant’s lectures. In all likelihoodproduced by professional amanuenses for student use, and now available

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

in English as the Lectures on Metaphysics (LM) and Lectures on Ethics (LE),these transcripts reveal little if any deviation from Kant’s published doc-trines. Nonetheless, while criticising Leibnizian and Wolffian metaphys-ics – for its claims to immediate noumenal intuition and for theperfectionism associated with this knowledge – Kant’s philosophyemerges as an elaboration, criticism, and modification of his metaphys-ical predecessors’ (Heimsoeth ; Heimsoeth ; Schmucker ;Wundt ). We shall return to this point below.

Thirdly, we must take due note of the institutional centrality of meta-physics to the Königsberg philosophy and theology faculties. Unliketheir contemporaries at Halle, students at Königsberg – expressly thetheology students – were required to begin their course of six semestersand three years with a semester of metaphysics, the most famous teacherof which during the latter half of the eighteenth century was ProfessorKant. The Methodological Instructions to Students, issued in the summersemester of , left them in little doubt about why:

Metaphysics deals with the first concepts and principles of all human knowl-edge, and without it nothing in any other science can be possibly explained orproven. It therefore facilitates the learning of all the other sciences because,unlike them, it treats of the world, of the nature of the body, of man and all hisspiritual powers, and of God; thus it fosters fundamental insight in theology,jurisprudence and medicine. (Stark , )

Eighty years after the fact, then, Thomasius’ proposal to explode themetaphysical unity of the neoscholastic curriculum – to separate philos-ophy from theology, replacing metaphysics with history, and moral phi-losophy with his Affektenlehre – would seem to have fallen on deaf ears, atleast in a faculty charged with the philosophical preparation of theolo-gians rather than jurists. Kant, who had himself been taught metaphys-ics by Knutzen, was in his turn required to teach it to the next generationof philosophy and theology students, which he did with great dedication.

Finally, to understand the importance of metaphysics at Königsberg,we need to take brief note of the university’s cultural and politicalsetting. As the capital of East Prussia, Königsberg was a frontier post ofLutheran German culture, adjacent to the religiously unreliable Balticstates and multi-religious Poland, and confronted by the vast unknownof Russian orthodoxy. It was in this setting that Königsberg’s law facultytook on the role of forming the ‘juridical civic consciousness’ of a pro-vincial ruling elite, imitating the forms of legal education and legalgovernance that held sway in the Prussian centre, but adapting these tothe culture and circumstances of the Baltic periphery (Lestition ).

Introduction

More importantly for our present concerns, it is also this frontier settingthat accounts for the key role played by Königsberg’s philosophy andtheology faculties. For it was their joint task to train the Lutheran clergyand schoolmasters of East and West Prussia, thereby functioning as akind of cultural headquarters for the maintenance of Lutheran religiousculture in the Baltic region (Hubatsch ). Salmonowicz thus points tothe quasi-colonial character of Königsberg culture when he reminds usthat by lecturing in German from a Lutheran perspective, the philoso-phy and theology faculties were doubly excluding the town’s Polishinhabitants (Salmonowicz ). For, in this way, a foreign language wasjoined to a foreign religion, forcing these residents to send their youngmen to Cracow for university education. If the brilliance of theKönigsberg Aufklärung thus failed to illuminate all its sons equally, thenneither were the teachings of its sage suited to all hearts and minds. Justas he had been taught by Schultz and Knutzen, Kant taught moral phi-losophy and metaphysics in German to Protestant boys, whose averagestarting age was sixteen. The majority of these boys came from Prussia,were students of theology, and were destined to become Lutheranpastors, teachers, and academics (Stark , –). This, as we shall see,turns out to be an important pointer to the role of Kant’s metaphysicsin the delineation and grooming of a certain kind of cultural deport-ment.

In helping us to grasp the circumstances in which Kant’s attack oncivil ethics took place, these four aspects of Kant’s role as a Protestantuniversity metaphysician provide important pointers to the historicalmeaning and significance of his philosophy. They indicate that the uni-versity where Kant received his education, and became a celebratedteacher, was one in which the philosophy and theology faculties fulfilledthe same joint function as in other Lutheran confessional universities:namely, the cultural formation of the religious intelligentsia – a rolesharpened by Königsberg’s role in maintaining Lutheran religiousculture at Prussia’s Baltic frontier. Further, they suggest that Kant’s elab-oration of a practical philosophy capable of harmonising rationalistWolffianism and voluntarist Lutheranism, undertaken within the frame-work of a curriculum officially regulated by metaphysics, was the latestrefurbishment of the discipline whose role had always been to effect thealliance of philosophy and theology: Schulmetaphysik. In short, despite thewidespread view of Kant as a non-metaphysical philosopher who tran-scends the history of religious, political, and cultural conflict, we haveprima facie grounds for approaching Kant’s philosophy in a quite

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

different manner: namely, from the viewpoint of its emergence in a uni-versity dedicated to preserving metaphysics as a comportment-educa-tion for religious intellectuals.

Still, regardless of their prima facie significance, unless we can showtheir relation to Kant’s central intellectual conceptions and doctrines,these features of his cultural and academic situation will remain onlypointers to the historical significance of his philosophy. To this end, thischapter undertakes a series of tasks. First – having prepared the his-torical and methodological ground (., .) – we essay an historicalreconstruction of Kant’s moral philosophy, focusing on its moral anthro-pology and attendant ‘spiritual exercises’, and treating these as the keyto understanding the manner in which this philosophy was embedded inhistorical and institutional reality (.). In doing so, we will be perform-ing the same kind of historical reconstruction as already undertaken onLeibniz, Pufendorf, and Thomasius, approaching Kant’s moral anthro-pology, like theirs, as the programme for a particular way of relating toand shaping the self. We then discuss the formative role of Kant’s meta-physical paideia for his doctrines of law and politics (Rechtslehre andStaatsrechtslehre) (.) and his philosophical theology and ecclesiology(.). Throughout, we shall maintain a running comparison betweenKant’s doctrines in these areas and those of Pufendorf and Thomasius.The object of this undertaking is to redescribe Kant’s metaphysical phi-losophy as a specific historical intellectual culture, neither more nor lesstrue to ‘humanity’ than its civil rival, but, like it, constituting a particu-lar response to the problems of religious and civil governance confront-ing early modern states.

.

The key to the historical significance of Kant’s metaphysics lies inunderstanding the ‘ascetic’ or self-formative role of his metaphysicalanthropology. The central obstacle to this understanding arises fromKantian historiography for itself. By dividing Kant’s philosophy into so-called pre- and post-critical phases – and by setting the threshold for thetransition in Kant’s supposed rejection of noumenal intuition and thenoumenal subject – this historiography presumes that Kant transcendedall merely historical moral anthropologies, thereby achieving a formal ortranscendental recovery of the conditions of subjectivity (Beck ,–; Schilpp ; Schneewind , –; Wundt , –).This historiography acknowledges that Kant’s pre-critical philosophy

The morals of metaphysics

remained wedded to the metaphysical cosmology of a spiritual worldand the metaphysical anthropology of man the intelligible being. But itrepeats Kant’s own metaphors of illumination and rebirth – of the‘great light’ of followed by the ‘awakening’ from dogmatic sleepduring the s – in order to present Kant’s ‘critical’ philosophy asindicative of a radical break with his metaphysical past. In this way,Kant’s later ‘critical’ use of the metaphysical cosmology and anthropol-ogy is treated either as a leap to a post-noumenal philosophy groundedin experience (Beck, Schneewind), or as the restriction of the noumenato the moral domain (Wundt). This historiography thus ignores theremarkable continuity of concepts, themes, and preoccupations joiningKant’s so-called pre- and post-critical phases, a continuity first demon-strated in Joseph Schmucker’s unrefuted textual analysis (Schmucker). Even more importantly, it misunderstands the ground of this con-tinuity, which lies in Kant’s unwavering life-long cultivation of the disci-pline of university metaphysics.

To grasp the nature of this cultivation we must return to our centralcharacterisation of a metaphysical culture. If Kant’s metaphysical ethicsis characterised by a strongly ‘ascetic’ or self-formative character –grounded in the anthropology of man’s dual intelligible–sensible being– this is because, like Leibniz and Wolff, Kant inherited a universitymetaphysics that made access to its object conditional on the transfor-mation of its subject. This discipline and culture had been formalised inthe great medieval scholastic systems, where it was tied to the life-formof a contemplative monasticism. We have already sketched the forms inwhich it reappeared in Protestant universities at the beginning of theseventeenth century (.); and we have outlined the Platonisticmodifications through which Leibniz made possible the broader dis-semination of metaphysics achieved by Wolff (.). Moreover, in drawingon Beroald Thomassen’s remarkable study of Albert the Great’sMetaphysics Commentary, we were able to gain an insight into the innernexus between the pursuit of metaphysical knowledge and the cultiva-tion of a certain kind of subjectivity (.). This linkage, we recall, isfocused in the dual characterisation of the divine intellect – simple,immaterial, active, creative, intuitional – and the complex human one,which appears as both intelligible and sensible, active and passive, crea-tive and reproductive, intuitional and discursive. In this anthropologicaldifferentiation of ‘rational being’, we have located the self-formativedynamics of the culture of university metaphysics.

Kant’s metaphysics is grounded in this same characterisation of the

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

divine and human intellects, emblematised in his version of homo duplexas ‘sensitively affected rational being’. This is a pointer to the fact thatfar more of Kant’s philosophy is prefigured in the history of universitymetaphysics than is generally understood. This continuity takes placenot so much at the level of exact doctrinal formulation – although heretoo there are striking similarities – but at the level of the intellectualgrooming of the being who is to be the bearer of metaphysical knowl-edge. Given our prior analysis of the self-formative use of the metaphys-ical anthropology we have good reason for approaching Kant’smetaphysics of morals as a discipline for shaping the moral deportmentof the metaphysician. In doing so we shall arrive at a new understand-ing of the relation between Kant’s pre- and post-critical philosophy, so-called, and thereby at a better understanding of his role as a universitymetaphysician.

We have already noted that Kant’s characterisation of the noume-non–phenomenon relation is prefigured by the longstanding metaphys-ical construction of the relation between divine and human intellection.In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant thus characterises the noumena orpure intelligibles in terms of a simple active intellect that creates thenoumena by intelligising them; and he characterises phenomena interms of the appearance of the intelligibles to rational beings whosepassive sensory apparatus cuts them off from divine intellectual intuition(CPR, A–, B–). Those who argue that Kant’s critical philos-ophy represents a fundamental break with university metaphysics do soby treating the inaccessibility of the noumena as indicative of Kant’sturn to an experience-based philosophy. It should already be clear thatthis reading of the history is premised on a fundamental misunderstand-ing. After all, metaphysicians from Albert to Leibniz also declare that thenoumena or divinely intelligised substances are not directly accessible toa rational being possessing man’s passive sensory apparatus. The pointis that the inaccessibility of the noumena belongs to a particular spiri-tual paideia. In presenting the pure intellection of the substances asunavailable to a sensible–rational being such as man, this paideia isdesigned to induce and intensify the longing to behold such substances– a pathos which in turn drives the self-purifying exercises of metaphys-ics as an intellectual ethos. In Wittgenstein’s succinct formulation, pre-senting limits to the human understanding ‘satisfies a longing for thetranscendent, because in so far as people think they can see the “limitsof human understanding”, they believe of course that they can seebeyond them’ (Wittgenstein , ). We can therefore shift the burden

The morals of metaphysics

of proof onto those who presume that in proclaiming the inaccessibilityof the noumena to human understanding Kant was effecting a radicalbreak with Schulmetaphysik and its culture. In fact, there is every reason toconclude that this proclamation, like its Albertian prototype, is a meansof inducing and intensifying the desire for metaphysical knowledge.

Nonetheless, it might be said that Kant’s shifting of the goal of meta-physical knowledge from theoretical objects to moral laws itself marks afundamental departure from the culture of university metaphysics.Those who take this stance usually treat Kant’s discovery or invention ofthe categorical imperative as marking such a departure. Their assump-tion is that, prior to this, university metaphysics had been ‘consequen-tialist’ or committed to constructing morality in terms of some kind ofgood end – generally the perfection of rational being – rather than interms of unconditional commands arising from man’s practical reasonor higher self. Not only is this view historically inaccurate, we shall nowsee that it is formulated in a language that is itself deeply embedded inthe culture of university metaphysics; for all anti-consequentialist moralphilosophy arises directly from the culture of metaphysical autarky. Asthe means of cultivating intellectual autonomy – the complete freedomfrom all dependency on material outcomes that comes from contemplat-ing rational being – metaphysics is constitutionally anti-consequential-ist, which makes Kant’s formulation of the categorical imperative far lessepoch-making than it seems. We can clarify this point, and Kant’s rela-tion to the culture of metaphysics more broadly, by briefly returning toAlbert’s metaphysics.

According to Thomassen, Albert’s metaphysics is intrinsically ethicalbecause it is the discipline for cultivating the contemplative ethosrequired for metaphysical knowledge (Thomassen , –). Albert,we recall (.), constructs the contemplative life as the most virtuous viathe Aristotelian differentiation between the two ends of human life –contemplative and civil happiness – which is in turn grounded in the dis-tinction between activities whose end lies in themselves and those whoseends lie outside them. Contemplation, or rational being’s action ofthinking and realising itself, is the only activity that contains its own endor is ‘good in itself ’; for by being its own end or good it depends on noother goods or ends outside itself, thereby unifying all the goods andbecoming autarkic. Civil happiness represents a lower form of life,however; for it arises from the prudential pursuit of extrinsic ends – typ-ically those of commercial and political life – whose morality is uncer-tain and whose realisation is always threatened by the contingency of

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

action in the material world. We have already noted that this subordina-tion of the civil to the intellectual life is grounded and shaped in themetaphysical anthropology. According to this, through speculativethought the ‘active intellect’ enlightens man’s higher rational being, per-mitting it to rise to the domain of the intelligences or noumena.Prudential virtue and civil activity, however, are viewed as products ofthe lower or unenlightened part of man’s being, governed by the ends ofuseful actions in the civil world.

If Kant needed no direct knowledge of Pufendorf or Thomasius inorder to display contempt for those who cultivate ‘civil righteousness forthe sake of peace or profit . . . all in conformity with the prized princi-ple of happiness’, this was because he could fit their kind of civil philos-ophy into the hierarchy of forms of ethical life to which he had beeninured through his own metaphysical enculturation. We glimpse themetaphysical–anthropological basis of Kant’s hostility to prudentialethics in the comments immediately following his display of contemptfor those who cultivate civil righteousness in this ‘consequentialist’manner:

But someone who wishes to become not merely a legally but a morally goodman (pleasing to God); that is, virtuous in accordance with the intelligible char-acter [of virtue] (virtus Noumenon), and who needs no other incentive to acknowl-edge something as a duty than the idea [Vorstellung] of duty itself – this, so longas the maxims remain impure, cannot take place through gradual reform, butmust rather be effected through a revolution in the disposition [Gesinnung] ofman (a transition to the maxim of holiness of disposition). And so a ‘new man’can come about only through a kind of rebirth, as it were through a new crea-tion (John, : ; compare with Genesis, : ) and a change of heart. (.; RRT,pp. –)

This suggests that, rather than representing an innovation symptomaticof a break with intellectualist metaphysics, Kant’s hostility to prudentialethics, and his anti-consequentialism more generally, are in fact improv-isations on longstanding doctrines whose role was to elaborate and val-orise the contemplative ethos.

We gain further confirmation of this conjecture by briefly consider-ing Albert’s treatment of metaphysics as the path to moral autonomy.Albert elaborates moral autarky in his account of the way in which theunmoved ‘first substance’ moves the ‘separated substances’ or intelli-gences that aspire to unity with it (Thomassen , –). The onlyway in which this can occur is if the first substance constitutes the good,thereby motivating the intelligent beings through their desire for the

The morals of metaphysics

good. Albert explicates this by dividing the desirable goods into thosethat are good in themselves and those only accidentally good. The acci-dental goods or ends are not chosen for their own sake but – as Albertsays in a formulation that will be immediately familiar to readers ofKant – only because they promise to satisfy the utilitarian desires of thesensible world, which means that they are always only means to the satis-faction of other ends, ad infinitum (, fn. ). As the final moving good,the first substance cannot therefore belong to the domain of accidentalgoods and must rather be the good in itself, just as, in the course of con-structing the categorical imperative, Kant characterises rational being as‘something whose existence has in itself an absolute value . . . which asan end in itself could be a ground of determinate laws’ (.; PP, ).In the same manner, therefore, as theoretical contemplation – that is,due to its freedom from extrinsic ends and purposes – the prime movinggood acquires the quality of autarky. Moreover, the moral autarky ofAlbert’s first substance is an expression of its intellectual nature. For thefact that there are no conflicting ends in the intelligible world (spiritusmundi) means that the intellectual good is self-consistent and completelyunified, unlike the accidental goods of the material world, which comeinto conflict because of the diversity of desires they are meant to satisfy.Finally, the fact that intellectual good is realised immediately in self-con-templation means that, unlike material good, it is independent of allconsequences in the temporal and spatial world.

Readers of Kant will of course recognise here many of the centralthemes of Kant’s metaphysics of morals. In particular, we find clearprefigurations of Kant’s contemplative anti-consequentialism; his dis-tinction between categorical and prudential motivation; his associateddistinction between the good in itself and the accidentally good; his doc-trine that morality consists in the purely formal unity of moral ends ratherthan the diversity of material goods; the associated theme of a moralworld consisting of a unity of intelligences oriented to a single intellec-tual good, which Kant calls the ‘kingdom of ends’; and, finally, we find aclear prefiguration of Kant’s fundamental doctrine that morality arisesfrom the manner in which a lower sensibly affected intelligence seeks itsown purification through contemplation of a higher autarkic intellectualgood – the ‘transition to holiness of disposition’. Here though we can seethese themes in their true historical light, as the doctrinal scaffolding fora contemplative ethos focused in a special spiritual exercise.

If the foundation of metaphysics depends on inducing the desire formetaphysical knowledge through the inculcation of its anthropology,

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

then we must learn to approach German university metaphysics as aparticular historical Lebensführung or culture of ethical life. Further, if themetaphysical conception of morality – as the self-transformative appre-hension of an intellectual end that is good in itself – is indeed only func-tional for an ethos of contemplative self-purification, then we shall haveto change our view of Kant’s project to provide a foundation for themetaphysics of morals. Rather than seeing the elaboration of founda-tions as a theoretical prelude to the moral life, we shall see that, for themetaphysical ethos, the pursuit of foundations itself constitutes thehighest form of ethical life; for it represents precisely that exercise ofspeculation through which the human intellect is purified and preparedfor contemplative felicity. Metaphysical knowledge of morality, we shallnow see, is not a theory of man’s moral worthiness. Rather it is the goalor condition that man strives to become worthy of through theoreticalactivity, in accordance with a hierarchy of forms of ethical life that isinternal to university metaphysics as an institutional ethos.

. ’

It is not difficult to show the centrality of the metaphysical anthropol-ogy to Kant’s work, from its earliest to its latest stages of development.Although he did not publish a work wholly dedicated to moral philoso-phy until the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals in , the anthro-pology of homo duplex is vividly apparent in those parts of his earlytheoretical philosophy that deal with the moral domain.

In the third part of his General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens(), Kant sketches a theory of morality in the form of a speculativecosmogony – a theory of the moral universe derived from its constitu-tive substances. There must, says Kant, be rational beings or intelli-gences on other planets because otherwise these planets ‘would not beof the slightest use to the end of nature, namely the contemplation ofrational being’ (.). Turning to our solar system, he then constructs amoral cosmogony in which the capacity for theoretical contemplationvaries with the moral physiologies of the different planetary beings, as afactor of their distance from the sun. The inhabitants of planets nearestto the sun have coarse and lethargic psychologies that mire them in theirsensuous natures, making them incapable of theoretical understandingand moral self-governance. The beings dwelling on the outer planetsthough possess refined and active organic natures, perfectly suited to theactivity of theoretical contemplation and the end of morality:

Kant’s metaphysical ethos

To what progress in knowledge will the insight of those blessed beings of thehighest heavenly spheres not reach! What beautiful consequences will this illu-mination of insight not have in their moral constitution! If they possess theproper degree of perfection and distinctness, the insights of the understandinghave far livelier attractions than the sensuous lures, which they are capable ofruling victoriously, crushing them under foot. (.)

Man, as the resident of a planet mid-way between the inner and outerheavens, is the possessor of a duplex moral psychology. Tied to sensoryknowledge and sensuous desire through the coarseness of his corporealnature, yet capable of theoretical reflection through the fineness of hisrational being, he must struggle to purify his ambivalent being in orderto render himself capable of participating in moralising theoreticalinsight (.–). Clearly this speculative moral cosmogony – represent-ing man as the nexus of the spiritual and material orders whose dualityhe embodies in his own higher and lower nature – shows Kant impro-vising on the scholastic metaphysical anthropology, attempting to adaptit to the Newtonian universe without compromising its role in program-ming the contemplative ethos.

A decade later we see Kant nearing his goal. Here he develops a cos-mological version of the metaphysical anthropology that would remainpowerfully present in his mature moral philosophy. Kant published theDreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics in in orderto criticise Swedenborgian claims to visionary insight into the spiritworld. In presuming the possibility of empirical experience of intelli-gible entities, Kant argues, such claims blur the boundary betweenman’s sensory understanding and his intellectual reason, whose mainte-nance is the task of metaphysics (.–; TP, –). Nonetheless, inthe course of establishing this boundary, Kant elaborates an account ofman as a rational being that remains rooted in the figure of his dual cit-izenship in two worlds, the intelligible and the material. We mayimagine, says Kant, that there is an immaterial world or mundus intelligib-ilis. Following the standard pneumatology of university metaphysics, hedeclares that this world consists of ‘all created intelligences, some ofthem united with matter so as to form a person, others not’ (.; TP,). Unencumbered by corporeality and passive faculties, the intelli-gences of this world are in immediate communication with each other,thereby forming a spiritual community unfettered by the media of spaceand time. Man, though, is also a member of a world of material entitiesgoverned by their causal relations in space and time, and, to the degreethat his understanding is tied to this mundus sensibilis through his senses,

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

he may have no knowledge of his place in the spiritual community;although this is something of which he may nonetheless be obscurelyaware (.–; TP, –).

Kant’s reason for insisting on the inaccessibility of spiritual commu-nity to man’s empirical understanding is not, however, to forecloseknowledge of it. Rather, it is to shift the locale in which this insight mustbe struggled for, to the moral domain. The concepts through whichKant effects this shift – those of the good in itself and moral autarky con-sidered as the unification of all ends or goods – would have been imme-diately familiar to Albert. We are aware of moral impulses lying beyondour own sensible desires, says Kant, through our capacity to sacrifice ourself-interested ends to the ends of other wills. Through this capacity weacquire insight into the fact that our higher will forms a unity with allother such wills, the spiritual community thus constituting a singlegeneral will whose rule (Regel) gives unity to morality: ‘As a result, we rec-ognise that, in our most secret motives, we are dependent on the rule ofthe general will. It is this rule which confers upon the world of all think-ing beings its moral unity and invests it with a systematic constitution,drawn up in accordance with purely spiritual laws’ (.; TP, ).

As in the Albertian version, the unity of the will is tied to its freedomvia the figure of contemplative autarky. By engaging in the only activitywhose end or good lies within itself – contemplation of the intelligibleworld – the private will frees itself from all ends whose satisfactiondepends on consequences in the world of space and time. It thereby joinsa cosmic unity or ‘kingdom’ of ends, the spiritual community or generalwill. In this manner man apprehends his participation in the intelligibleworld, where his purified intentions are immediately efficaciousthroughout the entire community of spirits – merely by being thought –and are themselves reciprocally purified through this moral unity: ‘Forsince the moral character of the deed concerns the inner state of thespirit, it follows that it can only naturally produce an effect, which is con-sonant with the whole of morality, in the immediate community ofspirits’ (.; TP, ). Heinz Heimsoeth’s comments on Kant’s spiri-tual anthropology and cosmology – originally made in – thusremain valid:

A pluralistically constructed ‘realm of spiritis’, of immortal individuals (of thekind in Berkeley’s world or in Swedenborg’s), is the tacit background of [Kant’s]rational faith . . . Every interpretation of the categorical imperative (which com-mands me always to behave in such a way that the maxim of my will could serveas the principle of universal law) in an individualistic sense changes its meaning

Kant’s metaphysical ethos

and essentially misinterprets Kant’s intent. For Kant, too, everything comesdown to a community of rational beings, which is made possible by the fact thatall of them will essentially the same thing and that in the spiritual-rational coreof their being they are totally alike. Only ‘empirical’ self is individual in thesense of something unique; the special character of individuals is merely a fact;it is not itself something of importance and value. (Heimsoeth , –)

The main difference between the Dreams and Kant’s earlier and moreWolffian cosmogony is his insistence that man is aware of his participa-tion in the general will not through a pure theoretical insight, butthrough an obscure yet immediate ‘moral feeling’. Kant introduces thisfeeling as the form in which man’s material nature experiences the lawof moral gravity acting on his intellectual nature in the spiritual commu-nity: ‘If the phenomenon of moral impulses were represented in thisway, the moral feeling would be this sensed dependency of the private willon the general will’ (.; TP, ). In fact Kant goes so far as to saythat, given the different sources of knowledge of the two worlds – intel-lectual intuition as opposed to sense-based discursive knowledge – theindividual subject of the intelligible and material worlds lacks personalunity: ‘Accordingly, while it is true that there is one single subject whichis simultaneously a member of the visible and the invisible world, it isnonetheless not one and the same person, for the representations of theone world are not, on account of their different constitution, the accom-panying ideas of the representations belonging to the other world’(.; TP, ).

Kant is thus able to insist on the illegitimacy of the illuminist claimsto empirical experience of spirits. Yet he can simultaneously explain why,in his version of the two worlds, he, ‘as a human being’, may be morallyaffected by his membership of the spiritual community while having noclear recollection of it. But this is simply a pointer to the fact that in theDreams Kant is putting the anthropology of homo duplex and the ethos ofcontemplative autarky to two distinct but associated uses. On the onehand, he uses these key elements of the metaphysical culture to defendit against its misuse by popularisers like Swedenborg, who threatened todiscredit university metaphysics by turning it into a kind of popularreligion. On the other hand, though, he continues to use the pathos ofthe inaccessibility of the intelligible world for its central self-formativepurpose. Once again, its role is to induce and intensify the longing formetaphysical knowledge, here in the form of a moral feeling whose veryobscurity incites the desire for insight into the intelligible world that itveils.

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

The Dreams thus provides us with good prima facie evidence thatKant’s moral philosophy emerged as an improvisation within the cultureof university metaphysics. Kant, too, ties the founding insight of themetaphysics of morals to an anthropology of the being capable ofbearing this insight, and he does so as a means of inducting his studentsand readers into metaphysics as a contemplative form of life. Why thendo we find so little discussion of the crucial role of the metaphysicalanthropology in modern accounts of Kant’s moral philosophy? For themost part such accounts either pass over the anthropology in embar-rassed silence or, if they do discuss it, treat it as part of Kant’s ‘pre-crit-ical’ metaphysical stage, consigned to the past by his great criticaldiscovery of the subjectivity of reason. This discovery, it is claimed,allowed Kant to found his moral philosophy in a principle open toformal construction or available to ordinary consciousness, thereby ren-dering the metaphysical anthropology redundant.

This was the view taken by such earlier commentators as Wundt andSchilpp (Schilpp ; Wundt ). But it is also the view of those morerecent commentators who, like Henry Allison, defend what has beencalled the ‘two-viewpoints’ interpretation of Kant against the ‘two-worlds’ reading (Allison , ). Here it is argued that as a result ofhis supposed ‘critical’ rejection of the metaphysical reality of noumenalentities, Kant’s subsequent use of the distinction between the intelligibleand sensible worlds was only to provide a single subject (person) with twoperspectives on their moral conduct – as intellectually self-generated andas causally determined (Allison , –, –). While coming froma different theoretical quarter, the manner in which Allison transmutesKant’s metaphysical anthropology into the transcendental conditions ofexperience has much in common with Henrich’s way of burying theanthropology in an indefeasible phenomenological insight (Henrich, –). Both are in fact attempts to remove Kant’s anthropologyof spiritual–rational being from the domain of competing historicalmoral anthropologies, in effect by appealing to the kind of insight thatsuch a being would have, were the metaphysical anthropology to be true.Finally, this strategy in turn underlies J. B. Schneewind’s treatment,which both acknowledges that Kant possesses an anthropology compar-able with its rivals, yet simultaneously identifies Kant’s with somethingknown to everyone as an indefeasible ‘fact of reason’:

Kant embeds his conception of autonomy in a metaphysical psychology goingbeyond anything in Hume or Rousseau. Kantian autonomy presupposes thatwe are rational agents whose transcendental freedom takes us out of the domain

Kant’s metaphysical ethos

of natural causation. It belongs to every individual, in the state of nature as wellas in society. Through it each person has a compass that enables ‘commonhuman reason’ to tell what is consistent with duty and what is inconsistent. Ourmoral capacities are made known to each of us by the fact of reason, our aware-ness of a categorical obligation that we can respect against the pull of desire.(Schneewind , )

In treating Kant’s metaphysical anthropology of noumenal man (onthe one hand) as a fantasmatic construct and (on the other hand) as thechrysalis from which man’s final recovery of his true rational beingwould emerge, this commentary misses the register in which Kant’santhropology operates – that of ethical self-formation. It is true thatKant is himself uncertain regarding the kind of belief he has in themetaphysical anthropology and cosmology employed in the Dreams. Thisuncertainty does not indicate however that Kant regards the anthropol-ogy and cosmology as a ‘joke’ or ‘plausible fantasy’, as Schneewindargues (Schneewind , ). Our analysis suggests that, rather thansignifying his incipient relegation of the esoteric anthropology in favourof a common human reason, Kant’s ambivalence is symptomatic of aquite different historical circumstance. If Kant felt called on to defendthe metaphysical ethos against its Swedenborgian popularisation intofanatical belief in an ‘empirical’ spiritus mundi, then he was also acutelyaware that Newtonian cosmology threatened to rob the spiritual (intel-ligible) world of all anchorage in the material one (Wundt , –).Far from leading Kant to repudiate belief in the cosmology and anthro-pology of the intelligible world, however, this set of circumstancesresulted in his elaboration of a new way of assenting to this belief.According to his new mode of assent, the intelligible world should beacceded to not as a hypothesis capable of empirical confirmation, but asa doctrine recommended to us by its moral consequences:

If one concedes to these thoughts enough plausibility to justify the effort ofmeasuring them against their consequences, one may perhaps find oneself,because of their charm, being imperceptibly prejudiced in their favour. For inthis case, the anomalies seem to vanish which are normally so embarrassinglyconspicuous in the contradiction between the moral and the physical circum-stances of man here on earth. All the morality of actions, while never havingits full effect in the corporeal life of man according to the order of nature, maywell do so in the spirit-world, according to pneumatic laws. (.–; TP, )

This modification of the mode of acceding to metaphysical beliefpoints towards Kant’s new way of justifying faith in immortality and adivine creator – in terms of a moral ‘need of reason’ rather than as a

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

confirmable truth. Moreover, it shows why the modern debate betweenthe ‘two-worlds’ and ‘two-viewpoints’ interpretations is beside the point.In constructing a moral plausibility for the doctrine of man as the inter-nally divided inhabitant of the intelligible and sensible worlds, Kant wasdeveloping neither an objective moral cosmology nor a subjective moraltheory. He was in fact improvising a new way for his students and readersto assent to the anthropology through which their desire for metaphysi-cal knowledge would be induced and their practice of metaphysicalspeculation impelled.

Next we may observe that this elaboration of a moral means ofassenting to the metaphysical anthropology was both the effect and theinstrument of an ongoing renegotiation of the relation between the eso-teric and exoteric dimensions of the metaphysical culture. For Albert,while all individuals possess the higher part of the soul open to enlight-enment by the ‘active intellect’, only a minority possess the organic con-stitution that permits this to occur. This, we may suggest, is a doctrineappropriate to historical circumstances in which only a monastic elitewill pursue metaphysical self-transformation. In Kant’s Natural History ofthe Heavens, however, all of the inhabitants of planet earth possess thekind of mixed sensible–intelligible natures that propel them towards thejoy of contemplation. This, we may conjecture, is a result of the extraor-dinary spread of metaphysical Christianity during the period of confes-sionalisation and early modernity. As a result of this spread, and in orderto preserve metaphysical faith against its marginalisation by an anti-metaphysical civil philosophy – committed to detranscendentalising phi-losophy and treating religion as a simple private faith – universitymetaphysics was driven to attach its esoteric doctrines to more readilyaccessible ones.

Kant’s construction of moral feeling in the Dreams is one such strategy,removing the metaphysical anthropology and cosmology from the pres-sures of speculative belief by treating them as only accessible via thefeeling of right and wrong that we all experience in daily life. We have justseen that Kant’s argument that we should accede to a purely moral beliefin these doctrines is a second such strategy, which would flow into his treat-ment of the belief in God and immortality. For our present concerns,however, the most important of these exoteric representations of themetaphysical anthropology is Kant’s construction of the ‘sense of duty’;for it is this strategy that takes us to the heart of his metaphysics of moral-ity, revealing it in fact to be another version of the morality of metaphys-ics. Kant’s conception of doing one’s duty for its own sake – regardless of

Kant’s metaphysical ethos

all external rewards or threats, merely out of regard for duty itself – hassomething in common with the unconditional duty ethics of monasticand military orders. Yet Kant is able to use this conception as a surrogatefor the central figure of metaphysical moral autarky, treating action inaccordance with duty for its own sake as a worldly correlate for the con-templative self-conformation of rational being.

In the Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason we thus find Kant com-menting that in this work he has been able to graft his philosophy ontoan available (moral) language and a popular (moral) consciousness,thereby avoiding the charges of unintelligibility levelled at the FirstCritique: ‘I have no fear, with respect to this treatise, of the reproach thatI want to introduce a new language, because here the kind of cognitionitself approaches popularity’ (.; PP, ). He explains his procedurein the accompanying footnote, where he comments that in the Critique ofPractical Reason he uses the concepts of ‘duty and contrary to duty’ tosignify the metaphysical notion of action that agrees or conflicts with ‘alaw actually present in reason as such’. Kant further remarks that ‘thisdistinction in meaning is not altogether foreign even to popular usage,although it is somewhat unusual’ (.; PP, ). Remembering, however,that the law ‘actually present in reason as such’ is in fact the rule of thegeneral will or spiritual community, and considering that Kant isattempting to graft this conception onto the popular ideal of acting inaccordance with the duty for its own sake, we have here a striking insightinto his programme for providing metaphysics with an exoteric anchor-age in an available ethical culture.

In fact Kant’s objective is to treat the sense of duty as the obscurefeeling of the unconditional laws governing individuals as members of apurely spiritual community, leading them to measure all prospectivemaxims and duties via philosophical reflection on those that could bewilled by a transparent community of intelligences. One can scarcelyimagine a conception of duty more opposed to Pufendorf ’s conceptionof it as the imposition of obligations by the civil authority in the inter-ests of social peace. As the exoteric face of Kant’s metaphysical ethos,his ethics of duty is centrally responsible for carrying the metaphysicalanthropology into the modern period. Here, many commentatorsaccept it as a fully rational exposition of the moral law whose force weare all supposed to feel. We have suggested, however, that the indefea-sible experience of duty that is supposed to ground Kant’s philosophy asa moral theory is actually produced by the use of this philosophy as adiscipline for the spiritual grooming of moral theorists. If this is so then,

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

like its Albertian predecessor, Kantian ethics must be regarded not as anattempt to pursue the metaphysical foundations of human moral life,but as an attempt to inculcate the pursuit of metaphysical foundationsas the highest form of moral life. It is now time to confirm this conjec-ture by considering the manner in which Kant himself grounds hisethics, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.

. pa ide ia

We can begin by observing that the three parts of the Groundwork areorganised as an ascending series of steps. This intellectual ladderrequires the reader or student to pass ‘from common moral rationalknowledge to philosophic’, thence ‘from popular moral philosophy tothe metaphysics of morals’, leading at last to the ‘final step from themetaphysics of morals to the critique of pure practical reason’ (.;PP, ). Through these steps Kant wants to show, firstly, that the meta-physical idea of morality is contained in ordinary moral consciousness;next, that clear insight into this principle requires relegating prudentialmoral philosophy in favour of metaphysical; and, finally, that the needfor this principle arises from man’s dualistic nature as an intelligiblebeing bound to the sensible world. Kant regards the three steps as stagesin the analytical clarification of the ‘supreme principle’ of morality thatis given in ordinary consciousness (.; PP, ). Moreover, despitewidespread disagreement over his degree of success, modern Kantiansaccept this claim. Henrich’s formulation is representative: ‘[TheGroundwork] begins from ordinary moral knowledge and at first groundsits argument wholly in evidences [that this consciousness] demonstratesto itself. This is explicable on theoretical grounds; at the time of theGroundwork Kant had already seen, and a little later resolutely empha-sised, that all understanding of moral consciousness had to begin fromits facticity’ (Henrich , ). We shall show, however, that the threesteps in fact form the architecture of an elaborate spiritual exercise,designed to lead the reader through ascending levels of speculative self-questioning and self-purification.

The character of this exercise can be clarified by looking at its crucialopening phase, designed to induct the reader (or Kant’s students) into asense of the need for a metaphysical ethics. This occurs in the Prefaceand, significantly, takes place via Kant’s claim to separate the metaphys-ics of morals from all moral anthropology. Kant’s central contention –that there must be an a priori knowledge of the grounds of morality,

Moral philosophy as metaphysical ‘paideia’

independent of all ethics derived from man’s empirical nature and his-torical circumstances – is usually treated as a purely methodological dis-tinction, between a pure and an applied ethics. What this standardinterpretation fails to understand, however, is that, in university meta-physics, theoretical purity is always the instrument of moral purity.Consequently, this interpretation fails to observe that in imposing the‘methodological’ distinction between the metaphysics and anthropologyof morals, Kant is actually introducing his core metaphysical doctrine:namely, that morality is grounded in the autarky of the pure intelligencesas a community of rational beings, rather than in man’s lower ‘empiri-cal’ human nature. His central argument – that to capture the uncondi-tional character of moral obligation one must posit metaphysicalknowledge of the law of a community of pure intelligences – occursrapidly and with little supporting argument, in the form of a ‘step’ frompopular moral consciousness to its pure philosophy:

For that there must be such a philosophy [cleansed of everything that may beonly empirical and that belongs to anthropology] is clear of itself from thecommon idea of duty and of moral laws. Everyone must grant that a law, if itis to hold morally, that is, as a ground of an obligation, must carry with it abso-lute necessity; that, for example, the command ‘thou shalt not lie’ does not holdonly for human beings [Menschen], as if other rational beings [vernünftige Wesen]did not have to heed it, and similarly with all other genuine moral laws; that,therefore, the ground of obligation must not be sought in the nature of thehuman being or in the circumstances of the world in which he is placed, butsolely a priori in concepts of pure reason; and that any other precept, which isbased in principles of mere experience – even if it is universal in a certainrespect – insofar as it rests in the slightest part on empirical grounds, perhapsonly in terms of motive, can indeed be called a practical rule but never a morallaw. (.; PP, –)

The metaphysics of morals outstrips all moral anthropology becausethe universe of rational beings, existing outside space and time, outstripsthe world of man, which consists only of those rational beings attachedto bodies in the spatio-temporal world. Despite Kant’s claim that it ispresupposed in the common idea of duty, the notion that moral obliga-tion is absolutely unconditional – in the sense of applying uncondition-ally to the commercium of pure intelligences in which man participates –is evidently the product of the esoteric metaphysical anthropology.Ludwig Siep is one of the few modern commentators to note the conse-quence of this notion: namely, that the metaphysical moral law isgrounded not in man as such, but in that part of his nature that belongsto the world of the vernünftige Wesen or pure intelligences (Siep , –).

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

But Siep is so disconcerted by this discovery – commenting that Kant’smethodological distinction might conceal the ‘secularisation of a relig-ious morality’ – that he fails to observe that here Kant is drawing on astandard doctrine of early modern university metaphysics. This, werecall, is the doctrine that the true bearer of metaphysical knowledge isnot the sensible–empirical human being, but the intellect whose purityand simplicity allow it to participate in the community of non-embodiedintelligences or rational beings. In other words, the true bearer of meta-physical knowledge is not man as a rational being but, as Kant has it,‘rational being in man’. The following remark, from Kant’s reflections onhis Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, captures his wayof formulating the relevant distinction: ‘There is a great differencebetween being a good man [Mensch] and a good rational being [vernünf-tiges Wesen]. To be perfect as the latter involves no other limits thanfinitude, [to be perfect] as the former involves many limitations’ (.).

We recall that this doctrine performs the ‘ascetic’ function of induc-ing the desire for metaphysical knowledge, representing it as the perfec-tion of man’s highest or best part – his rational intellect – and asconditional on the purification of his lower sensible nature through spec-ulation. Only the fact that Kant, too, is using the doctrine in this way –that is, as a means of tying the theoretical purity of metaphysics to thespiritual purity of the metaphysician – can explain the fact that he treatsempirical moral anthropology not just as philosophically mistaken butas morally corrupting:

A metaphysics of morals is therefore indispensably necessary, not merely inorder to investigate, from speculative motives, the source of the practical prin-ciples that lie a priori in our reason, but also because morals themselves remainsubject to all sorts of corruption as long as we lack the guiding thread andhighest norm for their correct judgment. For, in the case of what is to be morallygood it is not enough that it conform with the moral law but it must also be donefor the sake of the law . . . Now the moral law in its purity and genuineness . . . isto be sought nowhere else than in a pure philosophy; hence this (metaphysics)must come first, and without it there can be no moral philosophy at all. Thatwhich mixes up these pure principles with empirical ones does not even deservethe name of philosophy . . . much less does it deserve the name of a moral phi-losophy, since by this very confusion it actually damages the purity of moralsthemselves and acts against its own end. (.–; PP, –)

Kant’s claim to elevate the metaphysics of morals above all moralanthropology is thus wholly dependent on his own metaphysical anthro-pology, which he uses to induct his readers into a particular kind of rela-tion to themselves. Through the metaphysical anthropology Kant’s

Moral philosophy as metaphysical ‘paideia’

students learn to relate to themselves as beings whose true selves lie ina higher rational being, to which they may accede only through thepurifying activity of metaphysics. Moreover, they come to recogniseprudentially oriented empirical moral anthropologies – for example,Pufendorf ’s quasi-Stoic political anthropology and Thomasius’ quasi-Epicurean Affektenlehre – not just as philosophically erroneous but asmorally corrupting, as a threat to their cultivation of a true pure self. Iftherefore Kant is widely seen as offering an a priori metaphysics ofmorals rather than a ‘material’ moral anthropology, this is only becauseof the religious intensity with which the Kantian paideia welds its practi-tioners to its anthropology, impelling them to identify it as their true self.Intense and exclusivist adherence to ‘pure practical philosophy’ – asopposed to the plurality of moral anthropologies – is thus itself anoutcome of the manner in which the Kantian ‘school’ inculcates its par-ticular moral anthropology. By presenting the metaphysical anthropol-ogy as the path to a higher moral self, the Groundwork’s Preface envisagesreaders who will adhere to the philosophical purity of metaphysics as thekey to their spiritual purity as metaphysicians.

.. Inducing the desire for metaphysics

As we have already noted, Kant presents the first transition of theGroundwork – that ‘from common rational moral knowledge to philo-sophic’, undertaken in Section – as an analytical recovery of thesupreme moral principle from a popular consciousness already dimlyaware of it. Given our redescription of the Preface, however, we canexpect that this analytical procedure will in fact take place as an initia-tory spiritual exercise. This will be an exercise designed to induct readers(or students) into the speculative ethos by presenting it as the key to apure and purifying principle of morality, present, but only weakly, intheir ordinary consciousness. This expectation is not disappointed.

Kant purports to show the presence of his metaphysical moral prin-ciple in ordinary moral consciousness by leading the reader through fourstages of argument. First, he claims that his readers already know thatthe only unconditionally good thing is a good will (.–; PP, –).The good will is an incomparably higher good than all the ends we asso-ciate with happiness – ‘Power, riches, honour, even health’ – and all thevirtues to which the ancient philosophers aspired: ‘Moderation in affectsand passions, self-control, and tranquil reflection.’ Next, Kant moves toelucidate this still somewhat esoteric concept by showing that it is alreadycontained in the popular idea of doing one’s duty for its own sake

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

(.–; PP, –). Given that the moral worth of an action donefrom duty arises not from any desired consequences, this worth mustdepend solely on the purity of the rule (maxim) or principle of its willing.It must depend, that is, on whether the action is willed in a formal or apriori manner, independent of all gratifying consequences – as opposedto being willed in a material or empirical manner, in accordance withsome self-interested desire. Thirdly, he argues that his concept of dutymust be understood as the determination of the will through the mereidea or thought of duty (.–; PP, –). If the goodness of the willis not determined by the consequences that follow from its rules, then itmust be the mere idea or thought (Vorstellung) of the rule itself that deter-mines the will and constitutes its moral goodness. Finally, Kant claimsthat in constructing this conception of the moral principle he has donenothing more than clarify a principle already present in ordinary moralconsciousness (.–; PP, –). Given the simplicity of this princi-ple, which requires no sophisticated calculation of the empirical conse-quences of actions, it may be used even by the untutored mind, whichneed only reflect on whether one if its maxims – to lie out of self-inter-est, for example – could be willed as a universal law for all rationalbeings. Moreover, Kant already claims to have shown that the principleof enactment of universal law is actually revered by everyone – felt sub-jectively as respect for the law for its own sake – even if only philosophershave clear insight into its grounds.

It should already be clear that there are striking similarities betweenKant’s eliciting of the moral law from ordinary consciousness andAlbert’s grounding of metaphysics in man’s desire for a knowledge thatwill perfect his intellectual being. In the first place, Kant’s openingappeal to the reader’s ‘existing’ knowledge that only the good will isunconditionally good, actually takes place in the form of an evocationof the superiority of the contemplative over the active or prudential life.In proclaiming that the ends of happiness and the virtues of self-controlare not the highest good, Kant’s justification is not grounded in anyargument against the rival doctrines, but in something quite different: anevocation of the figure of contemplative autarky or intellectual auton-omy. This, we recall, is the conception of an activity governed by noexternal end or good, hence containing all goods, and obtaining therebythe status of the good in itself: ‘A good will is not good because of whatit effects or accomplishes, because of its aptness for attaining some pro-posed end, but simply through its willing; that is, it is good in itself and,beheld for itself, is of incomparably greater worth than anything it couldbring about merely in favour of some inclination or, if you like, the sum

Moral philosophy as metaphysical ‘paideia’

of all inclinations’ (.; PP, ). As in the Albertian version, the infe-riority of the prudential ethos arises from the fact that it seeks happinessin fallible empirical consequences, to which it is tied by man’s lower sen-sible nature; while the superiority of the good will is that, ‘beheld foritself ’, it is freed from such consequences, thereby obtaining the autarkythat in fact constitutes goodness for the contemplative ethos: ‘Even if . . .this will should wholly lack the power to carry out its intentions . . . ifwith its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing and only the goodwill were left . . . then it would still shine like a jewel for its own sake, assomething containing its entire worth in itself ’ (.; PP, ). Throughhis depiction of the autarkic will, therefore, Kant is not reminding hisreaders of what they already know, for otherwise even the civil philoso-phers would have known it. Rather, he is offering them an image of thebeing they might become, if only they will turn away from external pru-dential concerns with ‘power, riches, honour, even health’ – he does notinclude civil peace on this occasion – and begin the speculativepurification of their inner wills.

Secondly, we are now in a position to see Kant’s appeal to the idea ofduty in its proper historical light. It appears here not as the explicationof a difficult concept (the autarkic will) through one available to popularmoral consciousness, but in its true pedagogical form. Through thisappeal, Kant ties the esoteric culture of contemplative autarky to theexoteric one of duty for its own sake, in order to reshape popular con-sciousness. Here the crucial thing to attend to is Kant’s initial character-isation of duty: ‘We shall therefore take up the concept of duty, whichcontains that of a good will though under certain subjective limitationsand hindrances, which, however, far from concealing it and making itunrecognisable, rather bring it out by contrast and make it shine morebrightly’ (.; PP, ). Lying behind this soft-focus formulation is ofcourse the entire anthropology of homo duplex, according to which thegood will, as determined by pure self-active intellection, is man’s modeof participating in the kingdom of self-governing rational beings, whilehis lower sensible faculties – the inclinations that attach him to the worldof practical ends – constitute the ‘subjective limitations and hindrances’that give rise to the sense of duty. Like its prototype – the concept of‘moral feeling’ in the Dreams – the concept of duty as ‘respect for the law’in the Groundwork is constructed in terms of man’s ‘sensed dependency’as a material being on the self-rule of the community of intelligences inwhich he participates through his rational being. Kant’s formulation ofthe unconditional or categorical character of moral obligation – ‘so[setting aside inclinations] there is nothing left to determine the will

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except objectively the law and subjectively pure respect for this practicallaw’ (.; PP, –) – thus cannot be understood as the mereclarification of a mode of moral subjection that man is already (univer-sally) under. Rather, drawing on the full weight of the metaphysicalanthropology, it is a means of putting individuals under the mode ofsubjection peculiar to metaphysics as a particular moral culture. It is themeans by which Kant compels his readers and students to relate to theirmoral strivings not as impulses that might be satisfied through the attain-ment of worldly ends, but as the obscurely immediate commands of ahigher intelligence within them. In short, Kant’s explication of theautarkic will through the concept of duty – as the feeling of respect forthe law – is a means of enforcing a relation to the self suited to the prac-tice of speculative self-purification.

Third, in this light, one of the most obscure parts of Kant’s moral phi-losophy – the conception of the moral law as one the mere idea of whichdetermines the will, independently of all incentives – becomes a gooddeal clearer. The idea or thought (Vorstellung) of the moral law cannot beunderstood on the model of concepts in the empirical or mathematicalsciences. For, like the thought of the non-embodied substances in uni-versity metaphysics from Albert to Leibniz, this idea is of a pure intel-lectual order the thinking of which requires the purification of the beingwho thinks it. It is Kant’s distinction between the formal and materialprinciples of the will – the former determining the will through its mereidea, the latter through external empirical ends – that holds the key tothe interdependency of theoretical and moral purity in his ethics. For tohave insight into the mere idea or form of the moral law, independentlyof all the material ends it might have, means to have abstracted from thesensible ends that tie the will to the empirical world, thereby realising thehigher active intellect whose thinking of the moral law is simultaneouslyself-knowledge and self-completion. As we shall see in more detail below,Kant’s initial formulation of the moral principle – ‘I ought never to actexcept in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should becomea universal law’ (.; PP, ) – is thus the exoteric instrument for apractice of speculative self-purification. For the conversion of (material)maxims to (formal) universal laws requires the conversion of the sensu-ous (sinnliches) subject of the maxims into the intelligible (holy) subject ofthe law governing a world of intelligences.

Finally, we are now in a position to reinterpret Kant’s triumphant con-clusion to the first stage of the Groundwork: ‘Thus, through the moralknowledge of common human reason, we have arrived at its principlewhich, admittedly, it does not thus think abstractly in a universal form,

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but which it does have always before its eyes and uses as a norm of judg-ment’ (.; PP, ). In fact the true state of affairs is that through themanner in which he interpellates them as subjects of common moralknowledge – that is, positions them as bearers of the obscure sensibleinsight into their rational willing as intelligible beings – Kant impels hisreaders to pursue an abstract universal principle of morality. For this isthe means by which they will purify their insight and come to full partic-ipation in the community of rational beings; or, more concretely, acquirethe intellectual–social prestige attaching to those initiated into thispurificatory rite. It is not surprising therefore that the metaphysicalanthropology should make its first explicit appearance here in the con-clusion to Part I, after its important work of induction has been done:

The human being feels in himself a powerful counterweight to all the com-mands of duty presented to him by reason as so worthy of esteem – the counter-weight of his needs and inclinations, the entire satisfaction of which he sums upunder the name of happiness . . . [And] from this arises a natural dialectic, thatis, a propensity to rationalise against those strict laws of duty and to cast doubton their validity, or at least upon their purity and strictness, and, where possible,to make them better suited to our wishes and inclinations, that is, to corruptthem at their basis and to destroy all their dignity . . . In this way the commonhuman reason is impelled, not by some need of speculation (which nevertouches it so long as it is content to be mere sound reason) but on practicalgrounds themselves, to leave its own sphere and take a step into the field of prac-tical philosophy. (.; PP, –)

It should now be clear that any impulse that readers might feel to under-take Kant’s practical philosophy comes not from any natural dialectic inthe human being. Instead, it arises from the manner in which Section of the Groundwork has taught them to relate to themselves as beingswhose true or higher intellectual selves are in constant danger of corrup-tion by their lower sensible inclinations, thereby inducing the desire for‘pure practical philosophy’ as the key to their self-purification and self-completion. In short, like both Albert and Leibniz, Kant founds themetaphysics of morals as theory in a desire for ‘pure’ knowledge that hasbeen induced by the metaphysics of morals as paideia.

.. Formal insight and spiritual purity

In ascending from ‘popular moral philosophy to the metaphysics ofmorals’, Part of the Groundwork begins by returning to the theme of thecorrupting effect of bad philosophy (.–; PP, –). It is not theshortcomings of ordinary moral consciousness as such that necessitatethe step into metaphysics, Kant argues, but the manner in which this

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consciousness is perverted by a popular moral philosophy whose cor-rupting effect springs from its empirical character. We are back on theterrain of competing paideia.

According to Kant, in teaching the people through empirical moralexamples, and in deriving moral rules from the ends of empirical hap-piness – ‘Power, wealth, honour, even health’ – popular moral philoso-phy ruins the capacity for a priori insight into the idea of the moral law.We learned in Part I that this capacity is not only the foundation of atrue moral theory, but is also the means of attaining the only uncondi-tionally good thing, a pure will. In limiting itself to moral rules suited toempirical human beings – which, we recall, was the limit that Pufendorfand Thomasius imposed on their ethics – popular moral philosophy failsto see that the moral law is universal and a priori. In fact it fails to under-stand that this law rules a community of rational beings existing outsidespace and time, while being felt as an imperative by human beings in theempirical world. In order to combat the corrupting effects of empiricalmoral philosophy, then, it is necessary to pass from anthropology tometaphysics. Knowledge of the moral law must therefore be derivedfrom an a priori idea which, because it is to apply to rational beings ingeneral, must not be an idea limited to human understanding:

All moral concepts have their seat and origin completely a priori in reason . . .they cannot be abstracted from any empirical, and therefore merely contingent,knowledge. In this purity of their origin is to be found their very worthiness toserve as supreme practical principles . . . We ought never, as is permitted andeven occasionally necessary in speculative philosophy, to make the principlesdepend upon the particular nature of human reason. Since moral laws shouldhold for all rational beings [vernünftige Wesen] as such we should instead derivethem from the general concept of a rational being as such. In this way, weshould first completely expound morality as pure philosophy, that is, as meta-physics, independent of the anthropology required for its application to man –as can be readily done in this wholly abstract [abgesonderter] type of knowledge.

We have already shown that this proclamation of an anthropology-freemetaphysics is wholly dependent on the metaphysical anthropology –here, closer to an angelology. In keeping with this anthropology, Kanttreats metaphysics as the conduit through which the pure will of intelli-gible beings flows into the impure nature of human beings, which tiespure moral knowledge to a pure moral being that must descend intohuman being:

We know well that without possessing such a metaphysics it is vain – I will notsay to arrive at a speculative judgment of the moral element of duty in every-thing dutiful – but that it is impossible, even in ordinary and practical usage,

Moral philosophy as metaphysical ‘paideia’

particularly that of moral instruction, to ground morals on their genuine prin-ciples and thereby to create pure moral dispositions [Gesinnungen], grafting themonto human souls [Gemüthern] for the highest good of the world. (.–; PP,–)

Kant then proceeds to demonstrate the necessity of metaphysics.Metaphysics, he argues, is the only means by which humans can thinkthe notion of a moral law that necessitates the will unconditionally,merely by the idea of it. (.–; PP, –). He stipulates that: ‘Theidea [Vorstellung] of an objective principle so far as it is necessitating fora will, is called a command (of reason), and the formula of thiscommand is called an imperative’ (.; PP, ). The moral law is thusan unconditional or categorical imperative, and the need for metaphys-ics is tied to its capacity to show how a categorical imperative is possible.We can show the possibility of technical imperatives – the rules of geom-etry, for example – by showing their analytic necessity for achieving aparticular technical end, such as the construction of a mathematicalfigure. Further, we can show the possibility of prudential imperatives –as empirically necessary for certain kinds of happiness – although theseimperatives, being only the (hypothetical) means to realise empiricalends, lack the unity and unconditionality of moral laws. How then, asksKant, can we show the possibility of the categorical imperative, giventhat it may not be derived from, or made conditional on, any empiricalend or experienced good?

Only metaphysics provides the requisite ‘entirely a priori’ means ofinvestigating this possibility. Further, it takes the crucial first step in thisdirection by asking whether the mere thought or concept of the categor-ical imperative might not itself show, if not the imperative’s completepossibility, then at least its propositional content: ‘In this task we wantfirst to inquire whether the mere concept of a categorical imperativemay not also provide its formula, containing the only proposition thatcan be a categorical imperative’ (.; PP, –). Like the pure con-cepts that Albert and Leibniz behold directly emanating from the divinemind, the idea of the categorical imperative is envisaged as self-inter-preting – as revealing its rational content to a creature whose own higherrational being permits it to participate in immediate intellectual intui-tion. The idea of the categorical imperative is thus one that has alreadybeen thought prior to its appearance in the human understanding,where it appears in the form of a self-revealing idea:

When I think of a hypothetical imperative in general I do not know in advancewhat it will contain, until I am given its condition. But when I think of a categor-ical imperative I immediately know what it contains. For, since the imperative

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

contains, beyond the law, only the necessity that a maxim conform to the law,while the law contains no condition to limit it, there is nothing remaining towhich the maxim should conform except the universality of a law as such; andit is this conformity alone that the imperative properly asserts to be necessary.

There is therefore only a single categorical imperative and it is this: Act onlyin accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time willthat it should become a universal law. (.–; PP, )

In other words, Kant takes the crucial step towards showing the possibil-ity of the categorical imperative and, with it, the necessity for metaphys-ics, by demonstrating that through a mere a priori thinking of its idea,independent of all empirical ends and experiences, he has immediateinsight into its content. This content is in fact the necessity that all sub-jective ends or wills be conformed to a universal law or general will.

The first thing to observe regarding Kant’s step into metaphysics inPart is that it formalises a transition that has already taken place. Theidea of rational being as the ground of an autarkic will has been out-lined in the Preface. Moreover, this idea governs Kant’s extraction of hismoral principle from ordinary moral consciousness in Part , which, wehave argued, should be seen as a programme for inducing the desire formetaphysical knowledge in the reader. Part thus presumes a readerwho has already identified his true self with a hidden capacity for self-determination through the mere thought of the moral law. Further, thisis a reader who regards all attempts to derive maxims for the will fromexternal empirical ends – such as civil peace and prosperity – not merelyas philosophically erroneous but as morally corrupting. It is not so sur-prising, then, that Kant’s hierarchical division of the moral world intojust two orders – the prudential–empirical and the categorical–a priori– should be supported by no significant argumentation.

Kant, though, does offer two arguments for the inadequacy of pru-dential ethics: namely, that disagreement over the nature of happinessarising from man’s empirical desires robs this ethics of unity; and thatthe fallibilities of worldly realisation rob it of certainty (.–; PP,–). But these standard topoi presume the superiority of metaphysicsas an ethos – presume, that is, autarkic contemplation as the highestform of life. In fact their role is only to intensify the desire for participa-tion in that ethos, as we have already observed with regard to Albert’suse of the same arguments. From this position, had Kant actuallyencountered Pufendorf ’s solutions to these problems, then, we may con-jecture, he would have found them morally unintelligible. For Pufendorf,we recall (.), rejects the whole idea of a contemplatively unified moralpersonality, replacing it with his doctrine of a plurality of functionally

Moral philosophy as metaphysical ‘paideia’

differentiated offices and personae. Moreover, he secures agreementover the nature of happiness in the one area where this mattered – thecivil happiness of social peace – by delegating its determination to thepolitical sovereign, who could enforce it if needs be. Finally, Pufendorfwas of course fully aware of the fallibility besetting the worldly realisa-tion of social peace. He proposes to deal with this, however, not by with-drawing into a self-actualising contemplative felicity, but by equippingthe ruler with irresistible powers of political decision and action. For hispart, were Pufendorf to have encountered Kant’s arguments for theinsufficiency of prudential ethics and the necessity of a priori insightinto a universal moral principle – and it is likely that he would have beenfamiliar with earlier versions of these – he would have immediately rec-ognised them as intellectual instruments internal to the metaphysicalethos.

If Kant’s treatment of prudential–empirical ethics thus reveals nosignificant intellectual engagement with its most powerful civil-philo-sophical instances, this is not because he had transcended all merelyanthropological forms of ethics by recovering the pure form in whichrational being reveals its will to man. Rather it is because his own meta-physical anthropology – one might say his own metaphysical encultura-tion at Königsberg – pre-commits him to repudiate prudential–empirical ethics as a corrupting reinforcement of man’s lower sensiblenature. The prudential–empirical ethics discussed in Part of theGroundwork is actually internal to Kant’s metaphysics, and to his meta-physical anthropology in particular. The central role of Kant’s presen-tation of this ethics is thus actually exhortatory and pedagogical. It isdesigned to turn his readers away from this cultural rival sight-unseen,as a corrupting threat to the a priori grounding of morality, on whichthe completion of their true intellectual selves depends:

Against this laxity or even ignoble cast of mind, which seeks its principle amongempirical motives and laws, we cannot give too many or too frequent warnings;for human reason in its weariness gladly rests on this pillow and in a dream ofsweet illusions . . . it substitutes for morality some misbegotten mongrel patchedup from limbs of very diverse ancestry and looking like anything you please,only not like virtue, to him who has once beheld her in her true shape. (.;PP, )

In fact, this misbegotten mongrel ethics was, we recall, being taught justaround the corner from the lecture hall in which Kant denounced it, inKönigsberg’s law faculty. Here Sahme and his successors usedPufendorf ’s and Thomasius’ natural law ethics – governed by the merely

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

empirical happiness of social peace – ‘to grasp the way in which thepower of princely, territorial-state institutions would end the heritage ofreligious strife and sectarianism’, and to renew ‘juristic modes ofthought encouraging self-disciplining and a functional subordination todiverse roles on various levels below the prince’ (Lestition , ). Inshort, the persistence of detranscendentalised civil ethics in the face ofKant’s reinvention of metaphysical ethics is symptomatic of the fact thatthey represent autonomous moral cultures, grounded in divergent a-rational life-orders.

The manner in which Kant presents prudential–empirical ethics,however, does play an integral role in his ‘formal’ demonstration of thepossibility of the categorical imperative and hence of the necessity formetaphysics. In fact Kant motivates assent to his apodeictic demonstra-tion of the categorical imperative by presenting the rival pruden-tial–empirical derivation of moral rules as both philosophically andmorally impure – by presenting it, that is, both as a theoretical obstacleto pure (formal) insight into the categorical imperative, and as a moralhindrance to the speculative purification of the rational being who is tobear this insight. This presentation allows Kant’s ‘discovery’ of the cat-egorical formula to assume a powerful self-validating rhetorical form:namely, the form of a sudden illuminating breakthrough to a higherorder of pure intellection – an apodeictic insight into a self-interpretingconcept – which could of course only be achieved by a purified rationalbeing: ‘When I think of a hypothetical imperative in general I do notknow in advance what it will contain, until I am given its condition. Butwhen I think of a categorical imperative I immediately know what itcontains’ (.; PP, ). In this way, the validity of Kant’s demonstra-tion of an imperative whose meaning and necessity lies in the merethinking of its idea, comes from his own exemplary performantial think-ing of this idea. Through this intellectual performance he presentshimself to his readers and students as a being possessing the moral andtheoretical purity required to be the bearer of such an insight. This pro-vides the appropriate light in which to view Kant’s otherwise enigmaticstatement: that ‘perhaps the mere concept of a categorical imperativemay . . . also provide us with the formula containing the only proposi-tion that can be a categorical imperative’ (.; PP, –). If this is so,then the acceptability of the categorical imperative is internal to thepaideia of university metaphysics.

In addition to providing an appropriate historical interpretation ofKant’s construction of the categorical imperative, our account also

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provides a clear explanation for the double – formal and ascetic – char-acter of the formula itself, which has been a longstanding topos of Kantcommentary (Paton ; Williams ). For, on the one hand, Kantpresents the categorical imperative – ‘Act only on that maxim throughwhich you can at the same time will that it should become a universallaw’ – as a formal test of morality. As such, the formula is open to all sub-jects, who may determine the morality of their actions merely byreflecting on whether their maxims could be willed as universal law,without the need of any erudite analysis of possible consequences(.–; PP, –). On the other hand, it must be observed that Kantconstrues ‘maxim’ as the determination of a will distracted by thesubject’s empirical nature, ‘often his ignorance or again his inclinations’,while ‘law’ signifies ‘an objective principle valid for every rational being’(.; PP, , fn.). In other words, it becomes clear that to will a maximas a universal law means to purify the intellect of its sensuous limitationsso that it can will in accordance with the mere idea of the law, whichmeans that the categorical imperative is also a formula for the spiritualgrooming of the particular being who is to be its subject. In short, onlysomeone who has undergone the ascetic transformation prescribed bythe imperative as metaphysical paideia – that is, someone who is pre-sumed to have purged their empirical inclinations and prudential ends,and can contemplate the law as the rule of a universe of rational beings– will judge in the manner prescribed by the imperative as formal test.

This analysis of the categorical imperative is confirmed by, and inturn elucidates, the manner in which Kant exemplifies its use as a test,the most well-known of the examples being those of lying and false-promising. Kant repeatedly uses these examples in his ethics lectures,where he tells his students that while it may be possible to will ourselvesto lie out of self-interest, it is incoherent and self-defeating to will thateveryone should lie, by making lying into a universal law (.–;LE, –). As Kant says, such examples are not intended as empiricaljustifications for the categorical imperative, whose grounding must nevercome from experience, but as external indications of the fact that allmen do have the imperative in their reason. This, remarkably, is howmodern Kantian academics continue to present the examples to under-graduates today.

This way of presenting the examples, however, presumes a student orreader already disposed to see himself as a member of a communityof intelligences in transparent communication with each other. This

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concrete way of relating to the self both drives the test of universalisa-tion (because intellectual beings will identically) and ensures that lyingmust fail it (because it is contradictory for a being whose nature is pre-disposed to spiritual communio to dissemble). For an ethics grounded in adifferent anthropology and cosmology, therefore, the test of universal-isation need make no sense, and lying can have a quite different moralsignificance. In Thomasius’ detranscendentalised ethics – grounded notin the Platonic anthropology of rational beings in transparent communio,but in the Epicurean one of passional beings in civil conflict – there isno imperative to test the morality of lying by universalising it.Thomasius can thus offer a limited prudential justification of dissem-bling, to the extent that this is necessary for personal safety or the secur-ity of the state (KPK, .–, –). In other words, the categoricalimperative is not something contained a priori in everyone’s reason, butsomething installed in the reason of certain individuals, as part of theirinitiation into the moral culture of metaphysics.

Perhaps this is enough to show that Kant’s construction of the morallaw in Part of the Groundwork cannot be understood as the metaphysi-cal recovery of the principle of pure morality contained in all rationalbeings. This construction is properly understood as a use of metaphys-ics as a particular kind of spiritual grooming, one whose role is to formsubjects who will accede to moral principles as if they were commandsof a higher rational being within them. Kant treats the other three prin-ciples discussed in Part – the principles of humanity (rational being asan end in itself), autonomy, and the kingdom of ends – as ways of bring-ing the asbstract moral law ‘closer to intuition’ without recourse toanthropology. Given, however, our argument that the formulation of themoral law is itself wholly dependent on the metaphysical anthropologyand paideia, then we should expect the same of these three further prin-ciples. A few remarks on each of them will be enough to suggest that thisis indeed the case.

Kant’s formula for humanity or rational being as an end in itself –‘something whose existence has in itself an absolute value, somethingwhich as an end in itself could be a ground of determinate laws’ – is, ofcourse, one we have already seen prefigured in Albert’s metaphysics, asthe formula for the autarky of the divine being. This figure of an intel-lectual being containing its end in itself – therefore intelligising andwilling solely to realise itself, governed by no external goods and there-fore the subject of all good, existing as pure self-contemplation or pure

Moral philosophy as metaphysical ‘paideia’

self-willing – is absolutely fundamental to the metaphysical anthropol-ogy. Its role is to model the life of self-contemplative intellectual beingas the highest possible form of life.

Kant and his modern followers make much of the fact that for him itis man rather than God who bears this rational being. Kant marks thischange by calling this being ‘humanity’, declaring that it is the human-ity in us that is good in itself and that, as an end in itself, may never beused as a means to any extrinsic end (.; PP, ). As we have seen,however, it is not the ontological location of rational being that is rele-vant to its function in the metaphysical paideia – Albert was indifferent asto whether this being was thought of as outside or inside man – but itsuse as a model for the contemplative deportment. In this regard theimportant point is that Kant loads ‘humanity’ with all the attributes ofthe metaphysical God, specifically those of self-contemplating and self-willing intellectual being. He thereby establishes a difference between‘humanity’ and ‘human beings’ similar to that between divine andhuman being in traditional university metaphysics.

As a result of this metaphysical distinction, the Kantian sacralising ofpure humanity in oneself and others can be associated with a quitecallous attitude to empirical human beings. In declaring suicide to beabsolutely and unconditionally immoral, for example, Kant treats it asthe violation of humanity as a holy being by the lower order of empiri-cal human beings, intent merely on relieving their own suffering: ‘Butsuicide is contrary to the concept of humanity in my own person; andhumanity is in itself an inviolable holiness, wherein my personhood, orthe right of humanity in my person, is no less inviolably contained.’ Infact the sacredness of Kantian humanity is the mark of its differencefrom man, providing us with a new and faintly chilling insight intoKant’s subordination of happiness to morality: ‘It [humanity] demandsthe duty of morality, and it is only man who demands happiness, whichmust be unconditionally subordinated to morality.’ The metaphysi-cal–anthropological basis for the differentiation then follows:

Personhood, or humanity in my person, is conceived as an intelligible substance,the seat of all concepts, that which distinguishes man in his freedom from allobjects under whose jurisdiction he stands in his visible nature. It is thought of,therefore, as a subject that is destined to give moral laws to man, and to deter-mine him: as occupant of the body, to whose jurisdiction the control of all man’spowers is subordinated. (.; LE, )

By locating morality in the rational being who is in man – in order todefeat all attempts to ground it in worldly happiness – Kant’s principle

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of humanity as an end in itself thus gives rise to a purism capable ofinflicting real suffering and indignity on empirical human beings.

Kant’s principle of autonomy bears similar relations, of filiation andmodification, to the great figure of contemplative autarky. His primeconstrual of autonomy reads like a paraphrase of Albert’s constructionof the autarky of the divine intellect. As an end in itself, rational beingrenounces all interest or ends outside itself and thereby becomes the uni-versal ‘subject of all ends’ which, in turn, qualifies it to prescribe law forall beings, universally: ‘From this there now follows our third practicalprinciple of the will, as supreme condition of the will’s conformity withuniversal practical reason, the idea of every rational being as a willgiving universal law’ (.; PP, ). At the same time, Kant againappears to humanise this formerly divine capacity of intellectual being,ascribing it to man, who thereby becomes the author of the law to whichhe himself is unconditionally subject. In fact, with this emendation,Kant claims to have solved the problem that had defeated all previousmoral philosophies. This is the problem of how to obligate subjects tothe moral law, other than by determining their wills through incentivesand threats which, on his view, rob ethics of the universality and uncon-ditionality proper to rational being:

For if one thought of man merely as subject to a law . . . the law had to carrywith it some interest by way of incentive or constraint, because it did not springas a law from his own will . . . This meant that all the labour spent in trying tofind a supreme principle of duty was irretrievably lost. For, one never discov-ered duty, only the necessity of acting from a certain interest. This interestmight be one’s own or another’s; but on such a view the imperative was boundto be a conditioned one and could not possibly serve as a moral law. I will there-fore call this fundament the principle of the autonomy of the will in contrastwith all others, which I consequently class under heteronomy. (.–; PP,–)

Despite all talk of autonomy being Kant’s way of ‘honouring man’,however, this construction is not intended to cancel the ontological gapbetween empirical man and the pure rational being whose self-willingmakes it into the universal subject of all ends. For it is only ‘Personhood,or humanity in my person . . . conceived as an intelligible substance’ thatis in fact capable of governing itself through self-imposed universal law.Sensible man, however, driven by transgressive inclinations, mustremain subject to incentives and sanctions capable of regulating hisdesires and preparing him for the rule of his rational self. The principleof autonomy – the idea of man as a creature whose intellectual nature

Moral philosophy as metaphysical ‘paideia’

prescribes universal law to his sensible self – is thus not an idea thatsimply occurs to anyone. Rather, it is an idea which those undergoingthe metaphysical paideia are induced to think; for this is how they learnto renounce their attachment to ‘external’ ends and interests, therebyconstituting the autarkic intellect to which they aspire as the legislativesource and ‘supreme principle’ of all duties.

Seen in this light, the claim that civil philosophers like Pufendorf andThomasius did not solve the metaphysical problem – the problem ofhow to make the moral law obligatory without recourse to incentives andsanctions – appears in its true form: as a symptom of the chasm separ-ating radically different ethical cultures. It is not just that Pufendorf andThomasius were uninterested in this problem. In fact, as we have seen(., .), they actually attempted to obliterate the metaphysical culturein which it plays a self-formative role. This was why the civil philosophersrepudiated the metaphysical figure of God as a self-contemplating self-willing intelligence, and attacked the idea that human beings could bethe source of their own duties by sharing in divine intellection. It is alsothe reason they proposed instead their own anthropology and ethicalculture, based on the figure of man as a fractious empirical being whoseneed for civil peace could only be satisfied through duties imposed onhim by a sovereign will possessing supreme political powers. Far fromfailing to solve the problem of moral autonomy, Pufendorf andThomasius expounded an ethical culture that was explicitly and activelyinimical to this metaphysical ideal, treating it as symptomatic of thedesire of a spiritual elite to place itself above civil governance.

Similar remarks apply to Kant’s final principle, that of the ‘kingdomof ends’. Once again, Kant presents this concept of a pure moral com-munity as one that all rational beings will arrive at a priori, merely byreflecting on the idea of the moral law. If each rational being is the self-legislating source of a universal law, then all rational beings, regardingeach other as ends in themselves, must form a totality of rational wills.For each is the source of the law to which it is subject through the recip-rocal willing of the others, thereby forming a single general will (.;PP, ). Yet this idea that lies at the heart of Kant’s notion of thekingdom of ends – the idea of a totality of intelligences organicallyunited through reciprocal intellection – is clearly a version of the meta-physical notion of the community of ‘separated intelligences’ alreadyseen in the Dreams: ‘For Kant’, we recall Heimsoeth saying, ‘everythingcomes down to a community of rational beings, which is made possibleby the fact that all of them will essentially the same thing and that in the

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spiritual–rational core of their being they are totally alike’ (Heimsoeth, ).

Man’s full ‘democratic’ participation in this community in no waylessens the self-transformative gap between his intelligible and sensiblenatures. For participation in the self-governing community of intelli-gences is actually conditional on the speculative purification of man’ssensible nature. This, as we shall soon see, has striking consequences forKant’s theories of law and politics. For these theories are in factgrounded in this figure of a community of reciprocally determiningintelligences forming a single general will. Yet they maintain a utopianand potentially dangerous distinction between the ideal intelligible andthe actual historical community. For the moment we can again observethat considering themselves as reciprocally determining members of acommunity of intelligences or general will is not something that all menharbour in their reason. Rather, it is the figure of thought through whichmetaphysicians imagine their participation in the spiritual community.Kant’s notion of equal participation in the kingdom of ends – the ideaof each rational being issuing the laws to which all are subject – is thusnot a prefiguration of political democracy, but a thought-figure used inthe grooming of a spiritual elite.

.. Belief in metaphysics

Kant takes the third and final step of the Groundwork – ‘from a meta-physic of morals to a critique of pure practical reason’ – and, with it, thefinal step in his demonstration of the possibility of the categorical imper-ative, by formulating and resolving a problem arising from the prior twosteps. Reflecting back on his discourse, Kant observes that he has pro-vided a grounding for the moral law by invoking the idea of freedom asrational autonomy; that is, the idea of a rational being’s capacity todetermine its will purely on the basis of self-generated laws. But, whilethis grounding has permitted him to show the internal relation betweenfreedom and the moral law – for the categorical imperative is the onlyone that expresses the self-legislative spontaneity of the rational will – itdoes not, he says, appear to show why anyone should take an interest inthe moral law or subject themselves to it (.–; PP, –).

According to Kant, this problem arises from the apparent circularityof the relation between the idea of freedom and that of the moral law:‘We take ourselves as free in the order of efficient causes in order to thinkourselves under moral laws in the order of ends; and we afterwards think

Moral philosophy as metaphysical ‘paideia’

ourselves as subject to these laws because we have ascribed to ourselvesfreedom of the will’ (.; PP, ). As a result:

If someone asked us why the universal validity of our maxim as a law must bethe limiting condition of our actions, and on what we base the worth we assignto this way of acting – a worth so great that there can be no higher interest any-where – and asked us how it happens that a human being believes that onlythrough this does he feel his personal worth, in comparison with which that ofan agreeable or disagreeable condition is to be held as nothing, we could givehim no answer. (.–; PP, )

There is a way out of this problem, however, and it lies nowhere elsethan in the metaphysical anthropology, which Kant is now prepared tocall on explicitly. Man, says Kant, belongs to the sensible world, to whichhe is attached by his passive sensibility, and in which he knows himself andhis actions only as phenomenal appearances given to the understanding.At the same time, though, he also belongs to the intelligible world, inwhich he participates through the spontaneous activity of his reason,which he must suppose is the transcendental ego underlying his empiri-cal subjectivity. It is through this image of homo duplex as the nexus of theintelligible and sensible worlds, microcosmically reflected in the relationbetween the individual’s higher and lower intellectual natures, that Kantclaims to solve the apparent circularity between the concepts of freedomand the moral law: ‘For we now see that when we think of ourselves asfree we transfer ourselves into the intelligible world [Verstandeswelt] asmembers of it and recognise the autonomy of the will along with its con-sequence, morality; whereas when we think of ourselves as under obliga-tion, we regard ourselves as belonging to the sensible world and yet to theintelligible world at the same time’ (.; PP, ).

According to Kant, then, the circle between intelligible freedom andthe moral law – which threatens to make it impossible to explain whyanyone would take an interest in the law or submit to its commands – isbroken by the gap between man’s intelligible and sensible natures. Forthis gap is the source of the dynamic tension that leads man to take aninterest in the pure moral law and, in fact, to regard himself as boundby it:

Hence, in spite of regarding myself from one point of view as a being thatbelongs to the sensible world, I shall recognise that, as intelligence, I am subjectto the law of the intelligible world – that is, to the reason that contains this lawitself in the idea of freedom, and so to the autonomy of the will; consequentlyI must look on the laws of the intelligible world as imperatives for me, and onthe actions conforming to this principle as duties. (.–; PP, )

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

The key to the possibility of the categorical imperative, therefore, lies inthe idea of a world of intelligences and our higher selves as members ofit. For, in the difference between this viewpoint and his knowledge ofhimself as the passive member of the sensible world, man experienceshis ‘sensed dependency’ on the intelligible world, thereby taking aninterest in it, feeling himself bound by its laws.

This explanation, though, says Kant, marks the outermost limit ofphilosophical reflection on the possibility of the moral law. For, while itmay be thus shown that we take an interest in the moral law through theidea of the intelligible world, we are unable to know how we come to takethis interest or just what the reality of the intelligible world and itsfreedom might be. On the one hand, Kant claims that the idea of hismembership in the intelligible world is just one that naturally occurs toman: ‘This kind of conclusion must be drawn by a thinking man fromall the things that are presented to him’ (.–; PP, ). This meansthat the difference between his intelligible and sensible natures – thedifference that impels him to take an interest in the moral law and to feelhis subjection to it – simply occurs to the thinking man as the result ofspontaneous self-reflection. On the other hand, through this same spon-taneous insight, the thinking man becomes aware that he may have nodirect knowledge of the intelligible world, owing to the passive charac-ter of sensibility, which confines human understanding to the domain ofempirical appearances.

We cannot agree therefore with those modern commentators whotreat the practical (as opposed to the theoretical) interest in the intelli-gible world as arising from the epistemological critique of this world’smetaphysical reality in the Critique of Pure Reason (O’Neill, , ). Onthe contrary, it seems clear that Kant constructs the practical interest byrequiring belief in the metaphysical reality of the intelligible world, butas something inaccessible to man’s empirical understanding, and there-fore as something that induces and orients his desire for speculative self-purification. For this strategy – which is already present in the Dreams –is the basis of Kant’s argument that while it is possible to think such nou-menal ideas as that of the intelligible world, these must never be treatedas objects of theoretical knowledge, being acceded to instead only for themoral transformation that they work in us:

In any case, the idea of a pure intelligible world, as a totality of intelligences towhich we ourselves belong as rational beings (although on the other side we arealso members of the sensible world), always remains a useful and permitted ideafor the purposes of a rational faith [vernünftigen Glaubens], even if all knowledge

Moral philosophy as metaphysical ‘paideia’

stops at its boundary – useful and permitted for producing in us a lively inter-est in the moral law by means of the noble ideal of a universal kingdom of endsin themselves (rational beings), to which we can belong as members only whenwe carefully conduct ourselves in accordance with the maxims of freedom as ifthey were laws of nature. (.–; PP, )

Like the university metaphysicians who preceded him, Kant thus usesthe metaphysical anthropology to induce belief in the world of rationalbeings and its laws. He does so by treating the gap between man’s higherrational and lower sensible nature as the source of his interest in a pureand purifying metaphysical knowledge of morality, which can only besatisfied through a priori knowledge of the categorical imperative. Intreating the motivating idea of membership in the intelligible world asone that just occurs to the ordinary intelligence – and in simultaneouslyblocking further inquiry into this idea by treating it as beyond the reachof theoretical inquiry, thereby converting it into an object of moral faith– Kant thus folds his account of the foundations of the metaphysics ofmorals in on itself. He treats the idea that induces the interest in meta-physics as one in which human beings are already interested, transmit-ted to them via moral feeling from a world lying outside knowledge – buttherefore beyond doubt – hence the object of a philosophical faithadmitting of no further explanation or inquiry.

We, however, have offered further explanation and inquiry. In discuss-ing Part I of the Groundwork we discovered that, far from just occurringto the ordinary intelligence, the idea of man’s dual intelligible and sen-sible nature is one that Kant’s philosophy is designed to inculcate in itsstudents. It does so by grafting this idea onto their existing moral culturethrough the intermediate (exoteric) idea of ‘respecting the law for its ownsake’, and then using it to intensify the desire for the contemplative intel-lectual self-transformation that constitutes metaphysics as an ethos.Further, in our discussion of Part we showed that the categoricalimperative is not a formal test of morality, immanent in a universalsubject by virtue of the transcendent nature of moral reason. We discov-ered instead that it is the formula for a practice of speculative self-transformation, through which the members of a contemplative estatesubject themselves and others to the imperative as a distinctive moralviewpoint, renouncing worldly prudential ethics as morally corrupting,and constituting themselves as the ‘subject of all ends’. In short we haveshown that the idea of man’s membership in the community of intelli-gences arises not from his natural desire for metaphysical moral purity,but from the metaphysical paideia that uses this idea in order to inducesuch a desire.

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

As the central instrument of this paideia, Kant’s metaphysical anthro-pology shares the same mode of historical existence as those otheranthropologies that we have investigated: Pufendorf ’s doctrine of manas a being whose fractious yet weak nature drives him to sociability; andThomasius’ anthropology of passional man, who must practice self-restraint in order to achieve tranquillity. From a suitably indifferentscholarly standpoint, neither the metaphysical nor the civil anthropol-ogy can be regarded as representing a true human nature or experience.Each is a means of shaping a particular comportment of the person inaccordance with the objectives of a specific ethical culture. Historicalscholarship must therefore give up the idea that Kantian ethics is, asmetaphysics, superior to these rival ‘empirical’ anthropologies, by virtueof its grounding in a priori insight into the moral law. This idea, throughwhich modern scholarship remains tied to Christian transcendentalism,is, as we have seen, itself a product of Kant’s metaphysical anthropol-ogy. It results from the representation of the moral law as the rule of aworld of autarkic rational beings, and from the use of this representa-tion to induce an intense desire to repudiate all prudential ethics in orderto attain the telos of speculative self-transformation. The idea of theintrinsic theoretical superiority of moral metaphysics over moral anthro-pology may thus be regarded as symptomatic of the religious intensitywith which Kantian initiates adhere to their particular anthropology,holding to it as the key to their personal moral purity and insight.

We have thus achieved the first of our objectives, the reconstructionof Kant’s metaphysics of morals as one of the historically available ofethical cultures. In the process we have shed some light on what it wasabout this culture that suited it to the teaching of metaphysics in a uni-versity like the one at Königsberg. In transposing the old metaphysicalfigure of man’s participation in the intelligible world into a new moralregister – where it could be acceded to for its transformative effect ratherthan its theoretical objectivity – Kant had effected a major adaptationof metaphysical culture to its new, post-Newtonian and post-Westphalian, circumstances. On the one hand, through this new moralgrounding, he completed the ‘secularisation’ of metaphysics begun byLeibniz and advanced by Wolff. In making the idea of the spiritual com-munity into an object of ‘moral faith’ or ‘felt need’ alone, Kant loosenedthe ties of university metaphysics to its theological partner – which con-tinued to require literal belief in the spiritual community – therebyallowing a wider circle of intellectuals to cultivate metaphysical wisdomand authority. On the other hand, he simultaneously preservedSchulmetaphysik as a culture of self-sanctification used in the formation of

Moral philosophy as metaphysical ‘paideia’

a religious intelligentsia; that is, a group of intellectuals whose wisdomand authority is grounded in the (moral and theoretical) purity of theirintellectual ethos. In doing so he maintained the hostility of the meta-physical ethos to its civil alternative. In presenting the latter’s lack oftheoretical formality not just as philosophically erroneous but as morallycorrupting, Kant heightened the intensity with which his students wouldrenounce prudential–civil ethics – that ‘misbegotten mongrel patchedup from limbs of very diverse ancestry and looking like anything youplease, only not like virtue’ – and turn inwards towards the speculativepurification of the will. Through his moral philosophy Kant thuspursued the reciprocal goals of secularising metaphysics and spiritualis-ing civil knowledge. We are now in a position to investigate the effects ofthis programme in two further areas of Kant’s practical philosophy: hismetaphysics of law, and his metaphysics of religion and politics.

.

Kant’s Rechtslehre – variously translated as ‘theory of justice’ or ‘doctrineof right’ – is a direct extension of his metaphysics of morals. It uses thefigure of man as a physically embodied intelligence in order to constructan account of the rights and obligations of such intelligences as theyinteract through the possession of material things. In this regard, Kant’sRechtslehre represents a continuation of Protestant scholasticism which,we recall from our discussion of Leibniz and the Lutheran legal meta-physicians (..), sought to maintain natural law and politics asbranches of moral philosophy, hoping thereby to forestall the autonomyof law and politics as scientia civilis of the security state.

Like Leibniz’s, Kant’s metaphysics of law is closed and inimical to allthe civil sciences that Pufendorf and Thomasius had sought to admit tothe ethical domain through their reconstruction of natural law. Apartfrom occasional expressions of disapproval, Kant’s Rechtslehre thus allowsno room for ‘reason of state’ doctrine, Bodinian sovereignty theory,Helmstedtian political science or, indeed, the whole tradition of positivepolitical jurisprudence (Staatsrecht) that had emerged as a means of secu-larising the governance of confessionally divided communities. Indeed,in purporting to subsume positive Staatsrecht within a philosophicalreflection on its ‘formal’ conditions of possibility – conditions ultimatelygrounded in the figure of the community of rational beings – Kant’smetaphysics of law may be regarded as a direct attack on the desacralisa-tion of politics that had been achieved by German political jurisprudence

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

and formalised in Pufendorfian natural law. For, as we have seen, a centralcondition of this desacralisation is that law be regarded as coming froma source no higher than the positive commands of the civil sovereign,issued solely for the purposes of maintaining social peace.

This is not to suggest, however, that Kant’s legal philosophy is back-ward looking in any absolute sense. On the contrary, considering its longfuture, Kant’s treatment of law and politics has just as much right to beconsidered ‘progressive’ as Pufendorf ’s, even though they were headedin opposite directions. Indeed, Kant’s grounding of law and politics ininalienable natural rights clearly strikes many modern intellectuals as farmore progressive and enlightened than its civil–philosophical alterna-tive. For Pufendorf and Thomasius, it will be recalled, focus on politicalobligations and treat rights as creations of positive law, instituted for thepurposes of civil governance. The modern viewpoint may, however, beindicative of a ‘moral forgetting’ of the work of the state in pacifyingfratricidal religious and ethnic communities. Here, perhaps we shouldagain recall Pufendorf ’s remark regarding states, that ‘their force is notrealised by children or the unlearned, or their advantages by those whohave never experienced the losses consequent upon their non-existence’,leading the latter to ‘live in [the state] in such a way as not to value itsexcellence’ (DJN, .., ). In any case, Kant’s unapologetic treat-ment of justice or right (Recht) as a branch of metaphysical ethics showsthat the civil–philosophical treatment of jurisprudence – as an autono-mous discipline grounded in the positive legislation of the territorialstate – remained locked in intellectual combat with its metaphysicalrival. If Kant’s Rechtslehre did indeed look back to a curriculum in whichlaw and politics had been integral parts of a metaphysically unified prac-tical philosophy, then it simultaneously found a new and durable meansof anchoring the legal and political in the moral: namely, the languageof inalienable subjective rights.

.. Morality and law

At first appearing separately from the Tugendlehre (Doctrine of Virtue), towhich it would later be added to form the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant’sMetaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre (Metaphysical Principles of theTheory of Justice) was published in , hence late in his career;although Schmucker and Ritter have argued that its central figures ofthought can be found in Kant’s writings and Reflexionen from the mids (Ritter ; Schmucker ). Kant opens the Rechtslehre with his

The metaphysics of law

version of the relation between law and ethics, elaborated through theextension and subdivision of the central concepts of his moral philoso-phy: law, duty, obligation, and freedom.

Law and ethics, Kant argues, are both ultimately grounded in therational will (Wille) of the intelligible being. The medium in which theyinteract, however, and are related and differentiated, is not the rationalwill as such, but a specific use of it: namely, the free ‘power of choice’(Willkür):

The faculty of desiring in accordance with concepts, insofar as the grounddetermining it to action lies within itself and not in its object, is called a facultyto do or refrain from doing as one pleases. Insofar as it is joined with one’s con-sciousness of the capacity to bring about its object by one’s action it is calledchoice [Willkür]; if it is not joined with this consciousness its act is called a wish.The faculty of desire whose inner determining ground, hence even what pleasesit, lies in the subject’s reason is called will [Wille]. The will is therefore the facultyof desire considered not so much in relation to action (as choice is) but ratherin the ground determining choice to action. The will has no determiningground as such but, in determining choice, is practical reason itself. (.; PP,pp. –)

Through the faculty of choice, therefore, the will of rational beings(beings whose substance is reason) is connected to objects external totheir pure autotelic willing for the sake of willing. As the ‘external use offreedom’, choice is the gateway through which an otherwise self-enclosed and self-willing community of intelligences comes to desireexternal objects or material goods, thereby giving force to the inclina-tions that affect them as sensibly embodied rational beings. The meta-physical character of Kant’s treatment of the relation between law andmorality thus starts to emerge. Unlike Pufendorf, Kant does not con-struct this relation in terms of the need to uncouple civil authority frominner purity, the pursuit of security from the pursuit of moral regenera-tion. Rather, he constructs it as a particular metaphysical problemgrounded in the anthropology of homo duplex: namely, how to relate thegovernance of man’s external (material) choices to his internal (intelli-gible) ones.

Kant’s exposition of the difference and relation between law andethics in the Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals is not immediatelyperspicuous, although this may in part be due to the possible corruptionof this part of the text (Ludwig , –). Nonetheless, the centralpoint is clear enough. Unlike Pufendorf and Thomasius, Kant does nottreat law and ethics as independent spheres of duties – one grounded in

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

the state’s maintenance of security, the other in the private pursuit ofmoral regeneration. Instead, he treats them as different uses of a singlesubjective faculty, the power of free choice (Willkür). Jurisprudence thusconcerns a use of freedom that is ‘external’, both in the sense of beingoriented to outer ‘public’ actions rather than to the inner condition ofthe will, and in the sense of being governed by ‘external lawgiving’; thatis, by lawgiving designed coercively or ‘pathologically’ to determine thewill to a certain action, through rewards and punishments. Ethics,however, even if it may involve external actions, concerns the ‘internal’use of free choice – that is, its orientation to the purity of willing as such,rather than to the outcome of actions. For ethics is governed by lawgiv-ing that is internal in the sense of arising from the mere thinking of thelaw, or rational being’s capacity to govern its will through the mere ideaof duty:

All lawgiving can therefore be distinguished with respect to the incentive (evenif it agrees with another kind with respect to the action that it makes a duty, e.g.,these actions might in all cases be external). That lawgiving which makes anaction a duty and also makes this duty the incentive is ethical. But that lawgiv-ing which does not include the incentive of duty in the law and so admits anincentive other than the idea of duty itself is juridical. (.–; PP, )

Juridical laws thus pay no heed to the inner condition of the will, andethical duties may not be subject to coercive juridical lawgiving.Nonetheless, as different dispositions of the single capacity for freechoice, juridical and ethical laws share a common ultimate ground in themoral law, responsible for the pure rational determination of the will:‘So whether one considers freedom in the external or internal use ofchoice [Willkür], its laws, as pure practical laws of reason for free choicein general, must at the same time be the inner determining grounds ofthis choice; although they may not always be considered in this regard’(.; PP, ).

It is necessary to clarify why Kant argues that the laws of pure prac-tical reason underlie even the external use of freedom – constituting its‘inner determining grounds’ – but that they may not always be regardedas doing so. In his discussion of this problem, Wolfgang Kersting arguesthat Kant’s juridical and moral laws share a common grounding, as bothare instances of the Vernünftgesetz or rational law governing man’s‘transcendental freedom’ (Kersting , –). For Kersting, as a resultof the formal–rational unity of the subject of (moral) action, juridicallaw is simply the means of enforcing the moral law, under circumstanceswhere external hindrances to it require their coercive removal.

The metaphysics of law

Consequently, it is only because of these circumstances that the morallaw may not always be considered ‘the inner determining ground’ ofexternal choice.

There are several reasons for rejecting Kersting’s formal–rationalinterpretation of Kant’s construction of the law–morality relation. First,it is unacceptable to construe juridical law as arising to redress the exter-nal obstruction of moral action; for, given that the morality of an actionconsists in the mode in which it is willed rather than its successful execu-tion then, as Kant insists in the Groundwork, it is impossible to obstructmorality from the outside: ‘Even if . . . this will should wholly lack thepower to carry out its intentions . . . if with its greatest efforts it shouldyet achieve nothing and only the good will were left . . . then it would stillshine like a jewel for its own sake, as something containing its entireworth in itself ’ (.; PP, ). Next, and conversely, actions give rise towrongs redressable by juridical law only in so far as they are ‘facts’ or‘deeds’, signifying, as Kant puts it in the Rechtslehre, the capacity ofpersons to impinge externally on each other: ‘The concept of right[justice], insofar as it is related to a corresponding obligation (i.e., themoral concept of right), concerns . . . only the external and indeed prac-tical relation of one person to another, insofar as their actions, as facts,can have (direct or indirect) influence on each other’ (.; PP, ). Inother words, if morality is incapable of external obstruction because itis independent of external deeds, and if only external deeds ‘as facts’ arecapable of giving rise to wrongs redressable by juridical law and right,then we cannot accept Kersting’s argument that the wrongness of legallysanctionable actions arises from their obstruction of inner morality.

These problems are pointers to a more fundamental flaw in the kindof interpretation of the law–morality relation offered by Kersting. Inattempting to construct a non-anthropological account of the relationbetween law and morality – grounded in a formal–rational ‘law oftranscendental freedom’ – such interpretations fail to grasp the degreeto which Kant’s construction of this relation is embedded in the meta-physical anthropology of homo duplex. For Kant, if man is subject to twokinds of law, moral and juridical, that is because he harbours a dualmoral nature, which means that his exercise of choice (Willkür) assumestwo different forms:

That choice which can be determined by pure reason is called free choice. Thatwhich can be determined only by inclination (sensible impulse, stimulus) wouldbe animal choice (arbitrium brutum). Human choice, however, is a choice that canindeed by affected but not determined by impulses, and is therefore of itself

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

(apart from an acquired proficiency of reason) not pure, but can still be deter-mined to actions by pure will. Freedom of choice is this independence frombeing determined by sensible impulses; this is the negative concept of freedom.The positive concept of freedom is that of the capacity of pure reason to be ofitself practical. (.–; PP, )

There may indeed be only a single subject of choice, but the fact thatthis subject possesses dual moral natures means that it must be governedby two kinds of law. With regard to man’s rational or intelligible being,choice may be governed by the moral law; for rational being governs theexercise of its will by merely thinking the law. As a sensibly affected ratio-nal being, however, whose choice is subject to the force of the inclina-tions, man must be subject to juridical laws designed to overmatch theseinclinations with a countervailing pathological force.

In Kant, therefore, juridical law is related to moral law not as the spe-cialised coercive form of a single ‘law of transcendental freedom’, butby virtue of the fact that it governs the lower sensible level of man’s dualmetaphysical nature. Far from treating juridical law as arising from exer-cises of choice that transgress morality, Kant argues that, regarded as anoumenal or intelligible being, man is incapable of transgressing moral-ity by choosing in opposition to the law. The capacity to deviate from themoral law thus arises from man as a sensible or phenomenal being,whose sensible desires for external goods permit him to deviate from theautotelic willing of that which is good in itself – the rational being ‘in’him. At the same time, however, drawing on the standard Christian–metaphysical treatment of evil as ‘privative’ – that is, in terms of failureof good being to realise itself, as opposed to the positive existence of evil– Kant insists that bad choices reflect only sensible man’s incapacity.Despite appearances, man cannot freely choose against the moral law,as freedom arises only from man’s inexplicable self-activity as an imma-terial intellectual being, and the moral law is just the law of this activity(.–; PP, –).

In other words, the reason juridical law may not be understood interms of the coercion required to redress breaches of the rational morallaw is that the rational being who is the subject of this law is incapableof breaking it. Conversely, human beings may appear to act against thislaw in the phenomenal world, but in reality this transgression representsonly an incapacity for intelligible action arising from man’s lower sen-sible self. Here, we need only recall what it is that gives rise to juridicalwrongs – that is, man’s external choices ‘as facts’ through which personsinfringe each others rights – in order to obtain a clearer picture of Kant’s

The metaphysics of law

construction of the relation between law and morality. Now we can seethat Kant regards juridical law as necessary to regulate the relations intowhich human beings enter when, governed by their sensible inclinations,they choose external objects. For in this way they enter the materialworld of scarcity and conflict over goods, displaying their incapacity forrational moral self-governance, and requiring juridical coercion in orderto compensate for this. In other words, we may propose that Kantregards juridical law not as a direct compensation for a rational agent’sfailure to obey the moral law – that is, not as a specialised coercive formof the ‘law of transcendental freedom’ – but as a distinct kind of legis-lation, suited to rational beings whose sensible nature condemns them tointeract through possession of material goods.

Kant’s treatment of the juridical law as an ‘indirect’ form of the morallaw is thus not grounded in the posit of a common underlying formallaw of reason. Rather it arises from the fact that he regards the juridicalas a degenerated legislative domain, formed in order to regulate theconflicts arising from man’s (inescapable) choice to interact throughmaterial goods, rather than through the transparent commercium of thecommunity of intelligences. If, therefore, the gap between morality andlaw arises from the difference between man’s two natures, then their rela-tion cannot be understood by treating the law as a direct compensationfor moral failure. In fact, Kant presents a quite different view of the rela-tion between law and morality: namely, that organised by the figure ofa metaphysical ascent from man’s lower to his higher nature.

Taking place when man becomes capable of making the mere idea of(external) laws into the only incentive for obeying them – that is, whenman rises from his sensible to his intelligible nature – Kant envisages aprocess in which juridical laws are elevated and absorbed (aufnehmen) intoethical duties: ‘But just because ethical lawgiving includes within its lawthe internal incentive to action (the idea of duty), and this determina-tion must not flow into external lawgiving, ethical lawgiving cannot beexternal . . .; although it does elevate [absorb] duties resting on externallawmaking into the incentives of its own [internal] lawgiving’ (.;PP, ). In short, for Kant the relation between morality and law is notgoverned by the continuum of a formal–rational ‘law of transcendentalfreedom’, but by the gap between the intelligible and sensible natures ofthe metaphysical homo duplex. This gap is not to be closed through thephilosophical grounding of law in morality, but only through the meta-physical transformation of man’s sensible nature, which would make

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

juridical law redundant, as in Leibniz’s treatment of the same theme. Ofcourse, the fact that Kant envisages a closure of any kind entirely separ-ates his conception of law from Pufendorf ’s.

.. The principle of right and noumenal possession

In keeping with this metaphysical construction of it, Kant treats justiceas arising from a principle, rather than from existing legal systems orfrom the positive legislation of actual governments. He thus proceeds toconstruct the Princip des Rechts – the principle of right or justice – as thesecond great principle governing human conduct, alongside the categor-ical imperative. Anglophone readers need to keep in mind that theGerman Recht does not distinguish between right as a legitimate claim toexercise a personal capacity and justice as an impersonal body of lawsgoverning action – especially in Kant’s hands.

Invoking the standard metaphysical hierarchy of the sciences, Kantargues that the principle of justice may not be discovered by professionaljurists generalising from existing laws. Like Leibniz, he insists that thisprinciple is not to be found in empirical statutes, whose justness it mustin fact determine:

[The jurist] can indeed state what is legal [Rechtens]; that is, what the laws in acertain place and in a certain time say or have said. But whether what these lawsprescribed is also just [recht], and what the universal criterion is by which onecould recognise the just as well as the unjust (iustum et iniustum), this would remainhidden from him unless he leaves those empirical principles behind for a whileand seeks the sources for such judgments in reason alone, so as to establish thebasis for any possible giving of positive laws (although positive laws can serve asexcellent guides to this). (.–; PP, –)

Like neoscholastic and Leibnizian natural law – and in radical opposi-tion to Pufendorf ’s – Kant’s principle of right is thus intended as ahigher rational principle of judgment to which the state’s positive lawsmust be subordinated.

To leave his empirical principles behind, the jurist must turn awayfrom his concern with the ‘material’ ends governing man’s choice ofthings. Kant thus grounds his principle of justice in a purely ‘formal’consideration of the totality of reciprocal choices: ‘in this reciprocalrelation of choice no account at all is taken of the matter of choice, thatis, of the end each has in mind with the object he wants’ (.; PP, ).Arrived at in this way, Kant’s formula for the principle of justice is: ‘Any

The metaphysics of law

action is just [recht] if, through it or its maxim, the freedom of choice ofeach can coexist with the freedom of all, in accordance with a universallaw’ (.; PP, ). Kant unfolds this principle in four stages.

First, and fundamentally, he treats the principle of right as groundedin the specific metaphysical anthropology of man as a sensibly embod-ied pure intelligence. Like the moral principle, the legal one is groundedin the metaphysical figure of the reciprocal determination andunification of a community of rational wills. In the legal domain,however, the reciprocal acts of will are not mediated through the instan-taneous transparency of intelligible substances in intellectual commu-nity. Instead, here the exercise of will is oriented to and mediated by thechoice of material things, whose opacity and finitude means that thechoosing intelligences may infringe on each other’s choices, therebygiving rise to wrongs. This is because, to the extent that rational beingswill in accordance with the moral law, they are incapable of conflictingwith each other, constituting in effect a single spiritual community(kingdom of ends), devoid of all the conflicting personal ends arisingfrom sensuous inclinations. To the extent, however, that they choosematerial things, in accordance with their sensuous inclinations, humanbeings are differentiated and governed by material ends that can conflictwith each other.

Second, given that someone who hinders another’s external choicecoerces them, and that it is right to resist this through a counter-coercion,then the reciprocal coexistence of choices that constitutes the principleof justice is actually a universal reciprocal coercion: ‘Strict justice [Recht]can also be represented as the possibility of a fully reciprocal use of coer-cion that is consistent with everyone’s freedom in accordance with uni-versal laws’ (.; PP, ). The externality that differentiates justicefrom ethics thus arises from the human choice of material things – thatis, the desires of ‘sensibly affected rational beings’ for things lying outsidetheir own rational willing. This in turn necessitates that such choices beunified through external juridical coercion:

Even as justice [Recht] in general has as its object only what is external in actions,so strict justice, namely that which has nothing ethical mixed with it, requiresonly purely external determinations for the power of choice [Willkür]; for onlythen is it pure and not mixed with any prescriptions of virtue. Only a completelyexternal justice can thus be called strict (narrow). This is indeed based on every-one’s consciousness of obligation in accordance with a law; but if it is to remainpure, this consciousness may not and cannot be appealed to as an incentive todetermine his choice in accordance with this law. Strict right rests instead on

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the principle of its being possible to use external coercion that can coexist withthe freedom of everyone in accordance with universal laws. (.; PP, )

A community of rational beings would have no need of external law andwould not be subject to strict justice.

Third, Kant’s principle of justice is in its turn grounded in the idea of‘intelligible possession’ (possessio noumenon), which is the central conceptof his legal metaphysics and forms the somewhat idiosyncratic core ofhis treatment of private law (Privatrecht). In fact, like the concept of ‘dutyfor its own sake’ in his ethics, the notion of intelligible possession formsthe exoteric link that permits Kant to tie the idea of the community ofintelligences to an available civil culture – here to the legal culture ofprivate property rights. Kant’s central intellectual strategy in theRechtslehre is thus to allow the notion of intelligible or non-physical pos-session to embrace two very different capacities: the capacity of non-physical (intelligible) beings to possess physical things; and the capacityfor juridical ownership of something, as distinct from its mere physicalpossession. Through this structural ambiguity in the notion of non-phys-ical possession, Kant attempts to solve two problems at the same time.On the one hand, he seeks to provide a metaphysical basis for the prin-ciple of justice, in the figure of a community of immaterial intelligencesinteracting through their possession of material things. On the otherhand, he seeks to provide exoteric (juristic) plausibility for the notion ofnoumenal possession – that is, of beings who exist outside space andtime possessing physical things – by anchoring it in the notion of legalownership:

Something external is my property if I would be wronged by being disturbedin my use of it even though I am not in possession of it (not holding the object).– I must be in some sort of possession of an external object if it is to be calledmine, for otherwise someone who affected this against my will would not alsoaffect me and so would not wrong me. So . . . intelligible possession (possessionoumenon) must be assumed to be possible if something external is to be mine oryours. Empirical possession (holding) is then only possession in appearance (pos-sessio phenomenon) . . . (.; PP, )

Fourth, given that the idea of intelligible possession by definition liesbeyond all empirical experience, it must, like the idea of the communityof intelligences itself, be postulated as a ‘need of reason’, again for moralreasons. Kant thus ‘deduces’ this postulate by observing that, were suchpossession not possible, then the person would not be able to rightfullychoose objects. This, however, ‘would annihilate [usable objects] from a

The metaphysics of law

moral viewpoint [praktischer Rücksicht] and make them into res nullius[ownerless things]’, which ‘would be a contradiction of outer freedomwith itself ’. Further, given that intelligible possession does not requireactual physical disposal of the object, then, ‘in order to think of some-thing simply as an object of my choice [Willkür] it is sufficient for me tobe conscious of having it within my power’. As a result: ‘It is thereforean a priori presupposition of practical reason to regard and treat anyobject of my choice as something which could objectively be mine oryours’ (.; PP, –).

Kant completes his construction of the principle of justice – simulta-neously making the shift from private to public law ( jus publicum,Staatsrecht), or from law to politics – by stipulating that intelligible posses-sion remains merely provisional in the state of nature, requiring the civilstate for its actualisation. We will return to this construction of the civilstate in the following section. For the moment, we must clarify the his-torical significance of Kant’s principle of justice, by contrasting theinterpretations of some modern Kantian commentators with our own.

Despite certain differences of emphasis, Hinske, Kersting, andGregor argue that Kant provides a formal–philosophical basis for theprinciple of justice – that is, one transcending all moral anthropologiesand political purposes. As a result, he may be regarded as groundingjustice in human reason itself, and as showing that only a law groundedin the rational general will is agreeable to humanity (Gregor ;Hinske ; Kersting ). Kersting, for example, argues that Kant’s‘legal postulate of practical reason’ – ‘It is possible for me to have anyexternal object of my choice as mine’ – is the subject of a purely formal‘deduction’, analogous to the deduction of the categories in the Critiqueof Pure Reason. Without attempting to capture the detail of this argument,it is enough to say that it largely repeats Kant’s own procedure in thisregard, which we have already summarised. In short, Kersting rehearsesKant’s arguments that the possession of external objects by intelligiblebeings must be possible, because without it such objects would bereduced to the moral nullity of being ‘ownerless things’, and because aprohibition on ownership would be ‘a contradiction of freedom withitself ’ (Kersting , –).

Kersting acknowledges the indebtedness of this figure of thought tothe theological doctrine that God made the world for man’s use, but hefails to link this doctrine to the metaphysics of intelligible possession.Similarly, he also acknowledges the interdependency between Kant’s

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notions of law and the spiritual commercium between rational beings,citing Kant’s comment that ‘all legal relation is a purely intelligible rela-tion of rational beings to each other’ (.). Yet Kersting treats thisrelation between rational beings as expressive of a formal ‘law oftranscendental freedom’, insisting that this may be known in a formal‘anthropology-free’ manner. As a result he ends up treating the relationsof universal reciprocal coercion, established between intelligible beingspossessing material objects, as something known in a purely a priorimanner, independent of all anthropological presuppositions. Finally,with this formal–rational determination of the need for a general will inplace, Kersting, like Hinske and Gregor, can proceed to treat Kant’s con-ception of an anti-statist popular sovereignty as founded in reason itself.

We have already observed, however, that Kant’s metaphysical anthro-pology and cosmology are central to his construction of the principle ofjustice. They permit him to treat the legal principle as a devolved formof the moral principle, needed to govern sensibly embodied intelligenceswho interact through their choice of external objects, rather than in thetransparent medium of rational willing. In this regard one of the mostremarkable and least understood aspects of Kant’s construction of legalpossession is that it is configured by the longstanding metaphysical dis-cussion of how a timeless intelligible being can occupy the spatio-tem-poral world. Deeply embedded in the anthropology of Christ’s oneperson and two natures, and in the cosmological individuation of intel-ligible being through its embodiment in material things, Kant’s discus-sion of intelligible possession is grounded in the figures of incarnation,ensoulment, and the soul’s (non-spatial) habitation of the body. Thewrongs informing Kant’s notion of juridical right, the wrongs that jurid-ical law must redress, are thus above all those to which pure intelligencesbecome susceptible through their choice and occupancy of materialthings. Through this external embodiment, intellectual community losesits spontaneity and transparency; for wills individuated by their choiceof material things and goods enter into conflict, subordinating eachother, and thereby losing the intelligible freedom responsible for theirdignity.

Kant’s view of coercion is, thus, that it is an unfortunate consequenceof the differentiation of wills attending the sensible inclinations andchoices of rational beings. Among the comments that Kant wrote on hisown work, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, during–, we find the following:

The metaphysics of law

A will that is subject to the will of another is imperfect and contradictory,because man possesses spontaneity. If he is subject to the will of a man (eventhough he chooses this himself) then he is hateful and contemptible. Only hissubjection to God’s will is in accordance with nature. One must not performactions from obedience to a man that one could perform from inner motiva-tion; and to demand obedience where everything could have been donethrough inner motivation is to make slaves.

The possibility of subordination and legal coercion arises from themanner in which rational beings claim possession of the material world:

The body is mine because it is a part of my self and is moved through my powerof choice [Willkür]. The whole animate and inanimate world that lacks thepower of choice is mine in so far as I can control it and move it in accordancewith my choice. The sun is not mine. Other men are in the same position, whichmeans that no property is a proprietary or exclusive property. In so far thoughas I want to appropriate something exclusively, at least I will not assume thatanother’s will opposes mine or that his deed conflicts with mine. I will thereforeperform actions that signify my ownership, cut down the tree, make it intosomething, etc. The other man tells me that this thing is his because, throughthe actions of his choice, it belongs, as is it were, to his self.

The will that is to be good, if it is taken as universal and reciprocal, must notcancel itself for the sake of the other; and the other [person] must not claim ashis own that which I have worked, because in this case he would be assumingthat his will moved my body. (.–)

Here Kant prefigures the concept of intelligible possession and theprinciple of right that would be elaborated in the Rechtslehre nearly thirtyyears later. Yet here their construction is unambiguously metaphysical,carried out in terms of the degeneration of spiritual community attend-ing its necessary material embodiment, and in terms of the partial oranalogical restitution of this community through the establishment of‘universal and reciprocal’ rights of external possession. Moreover,despite all attempts to confine this metaphysical construction to Kant’s‘pre-critical’ stage, we find the same construction at the heart of theRechtslehre’s so-called formal treatment of the concept of original posses-sion:

In this way, taking possession of a separated piece of land is an act of privatechoice without being arbitrary. The possessor bases his act on the inborncommon possession of the earth’s surface and on the a priori general will cor-responding to it, which permits private possession of it (since otherwise unoc-cupied things would in themselves and in accordance with a law becomeownerless things). The possessor thus originally acquires a piece of land throughfirst possession and resists by right (iure) [mit Recht] anyone else who would hinder

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

him in his private use of it; although in the natural condition he cannot do soby legal proceedings [rechtswegen] (de iure), because there is yet no public law inthis condition . . .

Merely physical possession of land (holding it) is already a right to a thing,though admittedly not of itself sufficient for regarding it as mine. Relative toothers, since (as far as one knows) it is first possession, it is consistent with thelaw of external freedom and is also involved in original possession in common,which provides a priori the basis on which any private possession is possible.Accordingly, to interfere with the use of a piece of land by the first occupant ofit is to wrong him. Taking first possession has therefore a rightful basis[Rechtsgrund] (titulus possessionis), which is original possession in common.(.–; PP, –, fn. s)

Despite various attempts to treat these paragraphs as corrupt, or as athrowback to Kant’s pre-critical thought, this figuration of intelligiblebeing’s occupancy of the material world remains central to Kant’s con-struction of noumenal possession in the Rechtslehre. In Chapter of Part on Privatrecht, we thus find Kant returning to the account of ‘the inborncommon possession of the earth’s surface and . . . the a priori generalwill corresponding to it’, in order to ground his concept of original orfirst acquisition:

All human beings are originally (i.e., prior to any act of choice that establishesa right) in legitimate possession of land, that is, they have a right to be wherevernature or chance (apart from their will) has placed them. This kind of posses-sion (possessio) – which has to be distinguished from residence (sedes), a chosenand therefore an acquired lasting possession – is possession in common, becausethe spherical surface of the earth unites all the places on its surface; for if itssurface were an unbounded plane, people could be so dispersed on it that theywould not come into any community with one another, and community wouldnot then be a necessary consequence of their existence [Dasein] on the earth. –The possession by all human beings on the earth which precedes any acts oftheirs that would establish rights (as constituted by nature itself) is an originalpossession in common (communio possessionis originaria), the concept of which isnot empirical and dependent on temporal conditions . . . Original possession incommon is, rather, a practical rational concept which contains a priori the prin-ciple in accordance with which alone people can use a place on the earth inaccordance with principles of right. (.; PP, –)

In other words, even in the Rechtslehre, Kant continues to use the figureof the spiritual community’s occupation of the material world in orderto construct the notion of legal possession. He does so by treating thespherical nature of the earth as providing the conditions of materialcontiguity and scarcity through which the spiritual devolves intothe legal community; that is, a community characterised by universal

The metaphysics of law

reciprocal coercion rather than universal reciprocal intellection. Even ifKant wishes to treat this figure as non-empirical, and as a ‘practicalrational concept’ containing the principle of legal possession a priori, wecan see that it is not formal in the sense of ‘anthropology free’. On thecontrary, returning to his anthropology and cosmology of the spiritualcommunity’s devolution into a worldly community, Kant uses it as thebasis of the ‘formal’ construction of his ‘practical rational concept’ ofintelligible possession. Indeed, if we return to the two arguments thatKersting identifies as crucial to the ‘formal’ deduction of intelligible pos-session – namely, that external objects would be morally null withoutsuch possession, and that to prohibit it would be a contradiction offreedom with itself – then we can see that these arguments are them-selves desiderata of this metaphysical anthropology and cosmology. Forit is only in accordance with a moral cosmology of spiritual being’s occu-pancy of the material world that ownership of things becomes morallyredemptive of them. Further, it is only in accordance with the anthro-pology of intelligibly free rational being that the prohibition on posses-sion is self-contradictory. A pair of Reflexionen from c. shows us therole of the metaphysical cosmology and anthropology in constructingthese supposedly a priori insights:

The world is of no value where there are no rational beings [vernünftige Wesen]to make use of it (not merely to contemplate it). The purely willful use of theworld arises from the pleasures of life. Therefore, as the only natural end of allrational creatures, this is the only purpose for which the world is good, notmerely for consumption, but also for use. The highest condition of this purposeis solely the good use that [rational beings] make of themselves and the thingsof the world.

Everything in nature is good only in so far as it is useful, and everything isnonetheless subordinated to the power of choice. Nature agrees with freedomwhen the ends of the former are supported by the latter. (., and)

The ‘formal–philosophical’ character of Kant’s principle of justice –the notion of things chosen independently of all empirical objects ofchoice – is thus dependent on the figure of noumenal beings choosingexternal things in order to rescue them from moral nullity and to givethemselves a place in the world. In short, Kant’s formal construction ofnatural rights through the principle of right – to choose things in amanner compatible with the choice of all others in accordance with auniversal law – is actually grounded in the substantive metaphysical doc-trine of the moral occupation of the material globe by rational beingsseeking worldly communion.

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

Kant’s argument for the superiority of the metaphysician’s theory ofthe a priori principle of justice over the jurist’s empirical knowledgeof existing laws now appears in its proper historical light. Like the ideaof spiritual community in the Groundwork, the principle of a totality ofreciprocating free choices in the Rechtslehre may be regarded as a self-formative device impelling intellectuals to repudiate prudential–empir-ical (juridical) constructions of justice. It does so by presenting lawsimposed for the ends of civil welfare and security as radically incompat-ible with the exercise of free choice by rational beings. We can see thisconfiguration of ideas in the following reflection, written somewherebetween and :

It is not benefits that determine the law [Recht], but the wills of each and everyindividual. Given that, in accordance with the rule of freedom, each mustdecide what is beneficial on the basis of his own thought, then the authority forjudging others applies not to their benefits, only to their wills. The multitudecan form a political body through rules of prudence, although this [body] in noway arises from the rules of justice [Rechts].

No-one can cede to another the power to execute his own judgment of rights,unless he reserves the same power to hold the other to their obligation; becausethat would be to give another the right to do what he wanted (licentiam). Ifthough the other can do nothing unjust [unrecht] through his action, then hisactions are based only in his power and not in his right [Recht]. (., )

The prime role of Kant’s formalisation argument is to induce meta-physicians to renounce the civil–prudential rationale for the enactmentof laws, providing them instead with an image of themselves as givinglaws and possessing rights purely as sensibly embodied intelligences.With Kant’s subordination of the empirical legal order to a theory of itsprinciple, the metaphysical attack on the autonomy of the civil jurispru-dence – first encountered in Leibniz’s critique of Pufendorf ’s empiricalnatural law – appears in its modern form, as anti-positivism. In the lightof our discussion of Kant’s differentiation between metaphysical andempirical ethics, however, we may propose that the ultimate source ofthe anti-positivist principle of justice is not its a priori concept, but thespeculative self-purification of the philosopher who is to think it. For thisis the way the philosopher demonstrates his moral and theoretical purityin relation to the jurist, whose empirical concepts mortgage his thoughtto worldly benefits and powers. In short Kant’s anti-positivist critique of‘empirical’ law is in fact an anti-juridical attack on historical legal cul-tures and their bearers.

Given this, we may suggest that viewing the historical legal order asthe expression of natural rights is actually an historical projection of the

The metaphysics of law

ethos of philosophical intellectuals. This helps to explain the radicalinversion of the history of rights that seems to have taken place inGermany at the end of the eighteenth century. It was at this point thatpopular–philosophical journals began to argue that liberal rights hadbeen extended through the struggle for individual freedom against theencroachments of government. This was an argument supported by a‘new’ version of natural law – actually a revival of the old Christian legalmetaphysics – claiming that men entered political society in order to pre-serve natural rights, rather than to obtain security (Bödeker ). Infact, as we saw in the case of the rights associated with religious tolera-tion, the creation and extension of rights typically depended on theexpansion of the new territorial governments and their legal systems(Schiera ). That is because these rights had been fashioned in thecrisis of religious civil war as instruments for the state’s political neutral-isation of religion and pacification of society, giving them, as Dreitzelhas argued, a degree of independence from their philosophicaljustifications (Dreitzel a).

.. Kant’s political metaphysics

The metaphysical figuration of Kant’s Rechtslehre provides the key tounderstanding his theory of the state, displaying the intellectual–histor-ical basis of its divergence from Pufendorf ’s.

Kant necessitates the civil state – conceived as an all-powerful collec-tive will – as the means of realising an original noumenal act of appro-priation. Were it not for the relations of universal reciprocal coercionthat the civil society establishes between this act and all other such acts,then rightful choice and natural rights would remain in their merely pro-visional natural condition.

Now, with regard to external and therefore contingent possession, a unilateralwill cannot serve as a coercive law for everyone, since that would infringe uponfreedom in accordance with universal laws. So it is only a will putting everyoneunder obligation, hence only a collective general (common) and powerful will,that can provide everyone this assurance. – But the condition of being under ageneral external (i.e., public) lawgiving accompanied with power is the civil con-dition. So only in a civil condition can something external be mine or yours.(.; PP, )

Kant thus construes legal–political order – the state’s realisation ofthe coercive reciprocity of wills – as a lower-level approximation of thetransparent intellectual reciprocity of wills in the moral order. For this

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reason he rejects the Pufendorfian origination of the state; that is,through the pact in which individuals give up their will to decide matterspertaining to collective security, allowing the formation of a supremeagency of political decision and action. Instead, Kant regards the civilstate as arising from a real ideal unification of individual wills into ageneral will, for the purpose of realising natural right, or, allowing intel-ligible beings to form a community through the moral use of things:

The act by which the people constitutes itself as a state – more precisely, theidea of this act, which is the only means by which the legitimacy of the statecan be thought – is the original contract. In accordance with the original con-tract, everyone (omnes et singuli) within the people gives up his external freedomin order to take it up again immediately as a member of a commonwealth, thatis, of the people considered as a state (universi). And one cannot say the humanbeing in a state has sacrificed a part of his inborn outer freedom for the sake ofan end, but rather, he has relinquished his wild lawless freedom in order to findhis freedom as such undiminished, in a dependence on laws, that is, in a right-ful condition, since this dependence arises from his own lawgiving will.(.–; PP, )

If therefore the people is sovereign in the Kantian state, this is becausethe role of public law (Staatsrecht) is to realise the ‘rightful’ condition –that is, rule of rational beings exercising free choices (natural rights) inthe external world – and this is a rule that such beings can only imposeon each other. Kant’s ‘democratic’ construction of the people – as refus-ing all status hierarchies and obeying only those laws they could pre-scribe for themselves – is thus neither more nor less than a transpositionof the metaphysical image of the spiritual community into the politicalregister.

Here we reach the point of sharpest contrast between Kant’s concep-tion of the state and Pufendorf ’s; for Pufendorf, we recall (.), rejectsall forms of popular sovereignty – indeed all forms of sovereignty arisingfrom moral or transcendental sources independent of the state as a polit-ical artifice. Instead, he treats civil sovereignty as the outcome of a pactwhose function is not to realise the natural rights of a collective will, butto ‘impose’ the differentiated ‘offices’ – the subject who obeys inexchange for security, and the ruler who protects in exchange for obedi-ence – required to realise a single political end: social peace. We haveobserved that this differentiation of civil personae holds the key toPufendorf ’s distinction between sovereignty and form of government.For sovereignty is a ‘moral personality’ that may be occupied by theseveral forms of government – monarachy, aristocracy, democracy – as

The metaphysics of law

long as they fulfil the duties of the office by exercising supreme power inaccordance with the end of social peace. This in turn holds the key tothe ‘liberal’ differentiation of state and society in Pufendorf, for it is onlyconduct capable of threatening social peace that is subject to politi-cal–legal regulation, even if it is the sovereign’s prerogative alone todetermine what is to count as such. Finally, we can recall that Pufendorfelaborated these distinctions in order to shape a political and legalculture suited to the governance of a desacralised state. In fact, he usedthem to sever the state from all imperatives to represent a prior moralcommunity or will – a view central to the political theology of the con-fessional state – treating the state rather as a will formed artificially forthe sole purpose of security.

In unifying ruler and subject in the figure of the all-powerful self-leg-islating general will, Kant therefore collapses the desacralising distinc-tion between sovereignty and form of government and, finally, theliberal one between state and society. Rather than seeing monarchy, aris-tocracy, and democracy as optionally equivalent forms in which politi-cal sovereignty can be exercised, Kant treats them as physical correlatesof the spiritual community – ‘the united will of the people’. As such theyare required only as long as the actual will of the empirical people fallsshort of rational self-governance, being destined for subsumption by theonly form of government capable of realising this condition, the puredemocratic republic:

The different forms of states are only the letter (littera) of the original legislationin the civil condition . . . But the spirit of the original contract (anima pacti origi-narii) involves an obligation on the part of the constituting authority to make theform of government suited to the idea of the original contract. Accordingly,even if this cannot be done all at once, it is under obligation to change the formof government gradually and continually so that it harmonises in its effect withthe only legitimate constitution, that of a pure republic. [This must occur] insuch a way that the old (empirical) statutory forms, which served merely to bringabout the political subjection [Unterthänigkeit] of the people, are dissolved intothe original (rational) form. [This is] the only form which makes freedom theprinciple and indeed the condition for any exercise of coercion, as is requiredby a rightful constitution of a state in the strict sense of the word, finally leading[the spirit of the constitution?] to become the letter. (. ; PP, )

Under these circumstances, any gap between the ideal collective person-ality of the people and the actual moral person of the sovereign must beseen as a sign that the people has yet to form the self-governing generalwill needed to make the ideal but provisional rightful condition actual.

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

Only the pure republic, therefore, possesses the moral personalitycapable of representing the people’s will ‘in person’. It thereby closes thegap between the empirical exercise of civil power and the self-gover-nance of a community of rational beings, and, with it, the gap betweenpolitical representation and its subject:

All true republics are and can only be a representative system of the people, inorder to protect the people’s rights in its name, through all the citizens united,by means of their delegates (deputies). But as soon as the head of state (whetherthis be king, nobility, or the whole population, the democratic union) also allowshimself to be represented in person, then the united people does not merely rep-resent the sovereign, it is the sovereign itself. For in it (the people) is originallyfound the supreme authority from which all rights of individuals as mere sub-jects (and in any case as officials of the state) must be derived. (.; PP, )

Kant’s legitimation of civil sovereignty in terms of the people’s self-gov-ernance in the pure republic is, therefore, grounded neither in theformal principle of justice nor in a political philosophy borrowed fromRousseau, but in something he shared with the Genevan philosopher:the Christian–metaphysical conception of the state as the means bywhich the spiritual community governs its worldly commercium. We firstencountered this conception, it will be recalled (.), in Althusius’ notionof sovereignty arising from the ‘universal symbiosis’ responsible for thecommunity’s spiritual and physical perfection.

This image of the pure republic, as the means by which the moral com-munity realises its worldly self-governance, is responsible for Kant’sdeeply ambivalent attitude to the legitimacy of the state, which has beenobserved by commentators since the Rechtslehre was first published. On theone hand, to the extent that it is regarded as the pure expression of thegeneral will, then the state is hyper-legitimate. By representing the people‘in person’, the pure republic collapses the distinction between ruler andsubjects, who, because they are only obeying their own will, must obey itunconditionally: ‘For, in order for the people to judge the supreme polit-ical authority (summum imperium) with rightful force [rechtskräftig], they mustalready be viewed as united under a general legislative will; which meansthat they cannot and may not judge otherwise than the present head ofstate (summus imperans) wills them to’ (.; PP, –). Here Kant thusjoins Pufendorf in denying the right of active political resistance,although on quite different grounds and for quite different ends. ForPufendorf, the sovereign is an artificial construct created by individualsgiving up their political wills to another; and this means that while theymay privately disagree with the sovereign’s political commands, they may

The metaphysics of law

not dissent from them in public, unless they are to dissolve the state alto-gether. For Kant, though, in the sovereign of the pure republic, the peopleconfront the manifestation of their own lawgiving will. These moralorigins give the sovereign’s laws a quasi-holy status and makes even doubt-ing them a crime: ‘A law that is so holy (inviolable) that it is already a crimeeven to call it in doubt in a practical way, and so to suspend its effect for amoment, is thought as if it must have arisen not from human beings butfrom some highest, flawless lawgiver; and this is what the saying “Allauthority is from God” means’ (.; PP, ). Far from representing anaberrant concession to ‘political absolutism’, Kant’s denial of the right ofresistance, grounded in a secularised version of divine right, is in fact anintegral expression of the political metaphysics that Pufendorf ’s politicalabsolutism was designed to destroy.

On the other hand, because he regards the state as coming into exis-tence only to protect the exercise of pre-civil free choices – or ‘naturalrights’ as they are more commonly known – Kant’s political–legal orderlacks autonomous legitimacy altogether. Kant thus treats positive stat-utory laws as legitimate only in so far as they do not infringe naturalrights (.; PP, ). He insists, as we have just seen, that the onlylegitimate form of the state is a pure republic conceived of as the trans-parent expression of rational community (.–; PP, –). Thismeans that the legitimacy of the state resides neither in the welfare of itscitizens – ‘for happiness can perhaps come to them more easily . . . in astate of nature . . . or even under a despotic government’ – nor in theirsecurity, but only in ‘that condition in which its constitution conformsmost fully to principles of justice; that is, the condition that reasonthrough a categorical imperative obligates us to strive after’ (., ;PP, , ). As a result, Kant treats crime as a breach of the moralorder – rather than the state’s positive legal order – hence as somethingthat must be punished in an absolute retributive manner, rather than‘therapeutically’ in accordance with the ends of public safety (.; PP,–). In each of these regards, Kant’s theory of the state represents ananti-political reduction of civil to moral governance.

With this observation of his ambivalence over the legitimacy of thestate, we reach the limits of Kant’s legal and political thought asexpounded in the Rechtslehre. For the doctrine that underpins both thestate’s hyper-legitimacy and its chronic illegitimacy – the doctrine thatthe Rechtsstaat exists only to make it possible for intelligible beings to forma worldly community through reciprocating free choices – reminds usthat, after all, Kant’s theory of law and state is a manifestation of his

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metaphysical ethics. Kant provides us with a striking formulation of hisanti-juridical, anti-political social metaphysics in the following reflection,written between and :

The best condition of man in accordance with the rule of law is the social con-dition; and the best condition of social man with regard to his security is theirresistible power that compels him to act in accordance with this rule of law.The sciences and arts make him less resistant [to it]. In this way he becomes notbetter but tamer. One can easily capture him through a small appeal to hispleasures or his honour. He becomes in fact weaker because each such need,even were it to be chosen [willkürlich], is a bond that ties him to the law. (.,)

We might say that for Pufendorf and Thomasius the legal and politi-cal order’s taming of man – its pacification of the moral conflicts thathad torn Germany to pieces during the seventeenth century – signifiesnot its inferiority to, but its hard-won independence from the moralorder. For, when states had joined with their confessional churches inattempting to make man better, they had only intensified the destructivepowers of these conflicts. For Kant, however, the key to the separationof the law and morality – the fact that the law controls man’s externalconduct without attempting to transform his inner disposition – is finallya sign of the degree to which the legal and political order falls short ofthe moral one. Hence, while Kant too regards the Rechtsstaat as unsuitedto man’s moral regeneration, he, unlike the civil philosophers, does notrenounce the project of building a state in which such regeneration willtake place. On the contrary, like Leibniz and the Christian natural juristsof the seventeenth century, he continues to pursue this project througha conception of social order older but no less powerful than the idea ofthe sovereign territorial state: namely, the idea of the church as themodel for a general social order in which men can achieve moral regen-eration on earth. Surprising, then, as it might at first appear, Kant’s mostconsequential social and political thought occurs not in his Rechtslehre butin his ‘philosophical theology’, where, like other political metaphysi-cians, he uses the figure of the church as a blueprint for the moral state.

.

Almost all of the modern discussion of Kant’s Religion Within the Boun-daries of Reason Alone is organised around two interdependent conten-tions. First, it is widely held that the Religion represents the extension ofKant’s ‘autonomous ethics’ into the theological domain. This is taken to

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signify the emergence of a conception of religion purged of all statutoryor credal bases, grounded instead in the ‘rational religious’ postulatesrequired to realise the moral law – the postulates of intelligible freedom,immortality, and God as the creator of the intelligible world (Lötzsch; Troeltsch ; Wood ). Despite the differences in theirapproaches, these accounts all claim that in building on his autonomousethics – that is, on the basis of his purely formal account of the morallaw as the rule of man’s rational self-governance – Kant’s Religion is ableto propose a moral purification of Christian theology and religion. As aresult, religion appears as the external vehicle for the unfolding of therational moral law in history and society.

The second contention informing modern interpretations of theReligion concerns the historical context in which it appeared. If the Religionrepresents the moral enlightenment of orthodox Christianity then, so thisargument goes, its publication in coincided with a concerted attemptby the Prussian state to stem the tide of the so-called Aufklärung. Relyingfor the most part on Dilthey’s original reconstruction of the events, mostaccounts tie the onset of this period of reaction to the ascension of a relig-iously conservative Frederick William II to the Prussian throne in . In, Frederick’s ‘reactionary’ Minister of Education and ReligiousAffairs, Johann Christoph Wöllner, issued an edict commanding religiousand secular teachers to cease public religious experimentation and to‘adhere to the creed they are employed to teach’, whichever creed thatwas (Dilthey ). Kant’s intellectual trajectory intersected with the pathof Prussian Religionspolitik when the second of the four essays that wouldbe published as the Religion was rejected by the Berlin CensorshipCommission in . After securing the agreement of the Königsbergtheology faculty that this was indeed a philosophical rather than theolog-ical essay, Kant responded to the state censors by claiming the privilegeof academic jurisdiction. At the same time, he sent the manuscript to thephilosophy faculty of the non-Prussian University of Jena, whose impri-matur saw the book published the following year. Kant’s evasion of thePrussian censors had its sequel on October , when he received anofficial letter, signed by Wöllner on behalf of the king. This charged thathe had ‘abused his philosophy for the purpose of distorting and dispar-aging several principal and fundamental doctrines of Holy Scripture andof Christianity’, enjoining him to desist from such conduct (Di Giovanni). This way of situating Kant’s religious philosophy in its historicalcircumstances – that is, viewing it as an inherently progressive rationalenlightenment of orthodox Christianity, temporarily blocked by the

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forces of political and religious reaction – has now become standard inthe editorial introductions (Gregor ; Wood ).

In the light of our reconstruction of Kant’s metaphysics of morals,however, we have good reason to be sceptical about this whole approachto his philosophy of religion. Firstly, our account shows that Kant’s con-struction of the principle of moral autonomy cannot be understood asgiving rise to an ‘autonomous morality’ – that is, to an ethics whosecentral principle is independent of revealed religious doctrine, beinggrounded in free individual reason. Kant provides the following formu-lation of the theological disclaimer in the Critique of Practical Reason:

Nevertheless, the Christian principle of morals itself is not theological (and soheteronomy); it is instead autonomy of pure practical reason itself, since it doesnot make cognition of God and his will the basis of these laws, but only theattainment of the highest good subject to the condition of observing these laws,and since it places even the proper incentive to observing them not in the resultswished for but in the representation of duty alone, faithful observance of whichalone constitutes worthiness to acquire the latter. (.; PP, )

While it might serve to separate ‘pure practical reason’ from the revealedtheology of the church, this disclaimer cannot separate it from therevealed theology or anthropology of university metaphysics. On thecontrary, having observed that Kant’s notion of moral autonomy is actu-ally an improvisation on the figure of contemplative autarky – andhaving seen, as Kant himself acknowledges throughout his Reflexionen,that this autarky is grounded in the figure of God as pure self-actingintelligence – then we may say that the concept of moral autonomy isitself based in a revealed religious doctrine: namely, the doctrine of Godas autarkic intellectual substance as inculcated in Christian universitymetaphysics. The autonomy of Kantian moral reason is grounded in therevealed autarky of the metaphysical intellect.

We have further argued that the ‘formality’ of Kant’s moral principle– the notion that it may be arrived at through a priori reflection on itsidea, independent of all ‘material’ anthropology and cosmology – isitself dependent on the metaphysical anthropology of autarkic intelli-gible being. For we have seen that Kant’s conception of formal moralreason – the notion of an idea capable of determining its own contents,independent of all experience – is actually grounded in the thought-figure of an intellectual being whose objects of knowledge are createdby pure intellection of them. In other words, far from signifying theemergence of an ethics independent of revealed Christian doctrine,Kant’s conception of the autonomy of moral reason is actually a means

The pure religion of reason

of modelling the ethical subject in accordance with the figure of divineintellectual autarky transmitted in Christian metaphysics. We maypropose, therefore, that Kant’s reconciliation of reason and religionentailed a sacralisation of reason no less powerful than its rationalisationof religion. This reciprocity is captured in a contemporary text, bearingthe apt title of Predigten nach kantischen Grundsätzen (Sermons on KantianPrinciples): ‘Religion is innocent [of the charge of superstition] as itsprecepts are purely moral, and are compatible with human reasonbecause reason itself is holy’ (Anonymous , ).

Kant, of course, provides many declarations of the priority of moralphilosophy over Christian theology, such as this one from the Groundwork:‘But where do we get the concept of God as the highest good? Solelyfrom the idea of moral perfection that reason frames a priori and con-joins inseparably with the concept of a free will’ (.–; PP, ). Butthis is not the declaration of the rational independence of morality thatit first appears. For, given what it takes to think the a priori idea of themoral law – the need to purify the will of all empirical ends and incen-tives in order to realise the capacity for pure intellectual self-determina-tion – then human beings have to imitate the concept of God, whichremains central to Kant’s moral philosophy. While true enough in itsown terms, the claim that Kant generates the practical religious postu-lates ‘from reason alone’ thus turns out to be quite unrevealing; for theintellectual exercises that count as ‘reason’ in this regard are actuallyinternal to metaphysics as a quasi-religious culture of the self. Kant’sclaim that the ‘interest’ in intelligible freedom arises from an idea natu-rally present in the ordinary consciousness – the idea that man is both aspontaneous intellect in an intelligible world and a passive sensibility ina material one – only makes sense, we discovered, if this idea is seen asthe pedagogical means of inducing the interest. Given that they aregrounded in the same figure of thought, then we may treat the so-called‘need of reason’ for the postulates of immortality (required to reconcileintelligible virtue and phenomenal happiness) and God (as creator of theintelligible world in which this reconciliation can take place) as arising inthe same way – that is, as a need induced through the inculcation of themetaphysical anthropology.

The threshold that Kant establishes to distinguish rational ethics andrevealed religion – that the former is grounded in laws internal to humanreason while the latter assumes laws originating in a divine being outsidehuman reason – is thus itself an instrument internal to metaphysical

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culture. Considering that Kant regards the inner moral law as issuingfrom a divine autarkic intelligence or ‘holy will’, and given that this ideais one imposed through a metaphysical paideia rather than naturallyoccurring to the ‘ordinary consciousness’, then the question of whetherthe law is regarded as internal or external to human reason is not deci-sive for the distinction between moral philosophy and revealed theology.Kant’s distinction between rational ethics and revealed religion shouldthus be seen as a purely programmatic means of distinguishing andrelating two adjacent moral cultures. We have seen that the culture ofuniversity metaphysics requires its initiates to relate to the divine intelli-gising of the moral law as if it were the command of a higher self towhich they might accede through speculative self-sanctification. Thereligious culture in which this metaphysics was embedded, however,requires its community to relate to the moral law as if it arose from adivine being whose renovating grace might be obtained through varioussacramental rites. Intellectual historians must therefore learn to see theKantian distinction between autonomous morality and heteronomousreligion in a new way. For this distinction is in fact a device throughwhich Kantian metaphysics, as the ethos of a speculative elite, maintainsits spiritual superiority over the broader culture of sacramentalChristianity, while simultaneously anchoring itself within this broaderreligious culture, as the instrument of its moral enlightenment.

From the standpoint of uncommitted intellectual history, therefore,the events surrounding the publication of Kant’s Religion cannot beunderstood as a clash between a rational philosophy committed to theprogressive moral enlightenment of credal Christianity, and an irra-tional state bent on blocking this enlightenment in order to preservereligious orthodoxy as an instrument of political repression. There aretwo factors to consider here. On the one hand, the ‘theological enlight-enment’, to which the Religion was intended as a contribution, was actu-ally a Protestant theological movement dedicated to reforming orrebuilding the sacramental church on the basis of a ‘pious empiricalsubjectivity’ (Bohatec ; Sparn ; Sparn ). In publishing theReligion in this context, Kant was thus actually endeavouring to embedhis ‘rational theology’ in a powerful institutional religious culture,centred in a network of higher clergy and academic theologians knownas the Neologians (Aner ). On the other hand, given that Wöllner’sedict was not in fact an attempt to impose a state-sanctioned religiousorthodoxy – demanding rather that priests and teachers expound the

The pure religion of reason

doctrines of whatever church employed them and refrain from publicreligious experimentation – then we may conjecture that it was drivennot by religious conservatism as such but by something quite different.

In fact the edict would seem to be a typical instrument of the Prussianstate’s longstanding policy of supervising the religious peace whileremaining neutral between the rival confessions. This was a policy thatpermitted each confession to proclaim its doctrines, while discouragingproselytising, and insisting that theological speculation capable of dis-turbing the peace take place in private (Heckel ; Steiger ). Thequestion of the degree to which the Wöllner edict conforms to this policyis of course a matter for historical investigation, but several factors atleast give us reason to doubt that this measure was grounded in simplereligious conservatism. First, the king’s personal religious beliefs seem tohave been radical rather than conservative, being inclined to freema-sonry and Rosicrucianism rather than Lutheran orthodoxy (Schultze). Next, as we have noted, the edict was not directed at mandating aparticular confession but at restraining religious enthusiasm by control-ling public experimentation and proselytising. The edict repeats the post-Westphalian toleration of the three main confessions and in fact extendsthis to all sects not engaged in public proselytising. Finally, the culturallyand politically ambivalent character of the edict is shown by the mannerin which it was attacked and defended. As Epstein has shown, its mostpowerful critic was Lutheranism’s central governing body, the BerlinSuperior Consistory, which regarded the measure as state interference inthe church. Conversely, among its defenders were many ‘desacralising’intellectuals who regarded it as a statist measure for the political man-agement of religious enthusiasm (Epstein , –). This at leastallows us to offer an alternative historical interpretation of the attemptto censor Kant’s Religion. Rather than representing a reactionary politi-cal–religious attempt to repress the so-called Aufklärung, this act can beseen as an instance of the state’s longstanding policy of forestallingpublic religious controversy and managing religious enthusiasm – herethe enthusiasm of rationalist religious intellectuals.

In any event we have perhaps said enough to reorient the approachof historical scholarship to Kant’s religious philosophy and to his Religionin particular. This work is not indicative of the manner in which anautonomous moral philosophy sought the rational purification of credalreligion, finding the path of historical progress temporarily blocked bya reactionary state. Rather, it signifies the manner in which Kant

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

attempted to graft his version of the metaphysical paideia onto the ‘ratio-nalist’ wing of Protestant theology (Neology). Through this strategy hesought to reshape theology from within in accordance with his meta-physics, while simultaneously using theology as a social vehicle for hismetaphysics. This vehicle would be the figure of the church as a morallyperfecting civil society. This is the way, then, in which we shall approachthe Religion, treating Parts and as elaborating a philosophical theol-ogy in the form of the metaphysical ‘purification’ of biblical doctrine(..), and Parts and as using this theology to shape a conceptionof the church as a civil society under metaphysical moral governance(..).

.. Metaphysical hermeneutics

The doctrine through which Kant effects the transition from moral phi-losophy to philosophical theology is that of radical evil. This doctrine,whose elaboration forms the centrepiece of Part of the Religion, playsno role in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morality or in the Critique ofPractical Reason. It was, however, a standard topic in Kant’s lectures onphilosophical theology, and it is not difficult to see how he could use it togive a biblical–Christian inflection to his metaphysics of man’s nou-menal and sensible natures. Some modern commentators regard Kant’sdiscussion of evil as a uniquely profound contribution to intellectual life,in providing a rational account of man’s relation to God (Wood ,–). Others approach Kant’s treatment of radical evil as if it werea forensic analysis of the nature of sin and justification, to be judged inaccordance with the canons of assertoric argument (Quinn ; Quinn). It quickly becomes clear, however, that Kant’s discussion ofradical evil is neither unique nor rational in any absolute sense.

In fact, Kant’s treatment of the doctrine takes the form of the recon-ciliation of an apparent antinomy or contradiction between two dif-ferent conceptions of evil, aspects of both appearing necessary to theunderstanding. Evil for Kant consists in the choice to act on the basis ofmaxims satisfying the sensible inclinations, rather than the maxim ofduty or respect for the moral law. On the one hand, Kant argues, if weare to forestall an infinite regress of such choices we must be able to posit‘the presence in the subject of a common ground, itself a maxim, of allparticular morally evil maxims’; and this subjective ground for thechoice of evil maxims can be regarded as natural in the sense of being

The pure religion of reason

ultimate and ineradicable (.; RRT, ). On the other hand, though,if man is to be held responsible for his own moral condition, then thissubjective ground may not, as the pagans held, be considered as inher-ent in man’s sensuous nature. It must itself be regarded as an act freechoice: ‘Hence the ground of evil cannot lie in any object determiningthe power of choice through inclination, not in any natural impulses, butonly in a rule that the power of choice [Willkür] itself produces for theexercise of its freedom’ (.; RRT, ).

In order to stop the regress that would begin were we to ask for theground of this ultimate choice – of the maxim underlying all other suchchoices – Kant argues that we must treat it as a priori. It must thus beregarded as timeless and inscrutable to the empirical understanding,which accounts for it being to all appearances innate, while nonethelessremaining intelligibly free and imputable:

But since the first ground of the adoption of our maxims, which must itselfagain lie in the free power of choice, cannot be any fact possibly given in expe-rience, the good or evil in the human being is said to be innate (as the subjec-tive first ground of the adoption of this or that maxim with respect to the morallaw) only in the sense that it is posited as the ground antecedent to every use offreedom given in experience (from the earliest youth as far back as birth) and isthus represented as present in the human being at the moment of birth – notthat birth itself is its cause. (.; RRT, )

Far from being uniquely Kantian, this resolution of the problem ofevil – in which man is regarded as freely choosing the evil nature thatcorrupts all his choices – was standard in seventeenth-century Lutheranmetaphysics, as we learned from Walter Sparn (.). Sparn, we canrecall, argues that this figure of thought served a particular end withinChristian apologetics: namely, that of subsuming the pagan philosophi-cal conception evil (as arising from man’s sensuous nature) within theChristian theological doctrine of sin (as ur-transgression of divine law).In this way the doctrine permitted the subordination of pagan ethicalnaturalism to Christian moral transcendentalism, thereby effecting aharmonisation of philosophy and theology typical of ProtestantSchulmetaphysik (Sparn , –).

From Josef Bohatec’s still-unsurpassed study of Kant’s theologicalsources we learn that, in late-eighteenth-century Königsberg, it was pos-sible for a Protestant metaphysician to put the same figure of thought toa remarkably similar use. Bohatec argues that Kant uses this figure toreconcile Wolffian moral naturalism – which attributed evil to man’serror-inducing senses – and the Pietist conception of evil as the free

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

transgression of divine command. Moreover, he shows that, in doing so,Kant’s use of this doctrine of radical evil closely follows that of anumber of contemporary Neologians – Heilmann, Schultz, Stapfer, andBaumgarten – whose programme involved just this synthesis ofWolffianism and Pietism into a philosophical religion (Bohatec ,–). We have already observed that reconciling the rationalist andPietist models of spiritual regeneration was a central preoccupation ofthe Königsberg philosophy and theology faculties during Kant’s forma-tive years.

If Kant’s was the latest in a long line of metaphysical argumentsdesigned to reconcile philosophical moral naturalism and Christianmoral transcendentalism – ‘nature’ and ‘freedom’ – then it is importantto observe that, like its predecessors, Kant’s version also has a ‘circular’character. Here we use this term in an historical and descriptive, ratherthan a forensic and normative manner; for our aim is to show that thecircularity of Kant’s argument regarding radical evil is actually the con-dition of it fulfilling its role in the metaphysical paideia. Kant expoundshis theme of a freely chosen evil nature through a discussion of the pro-pensity to evil, building a good deal of his argument into the definitionof propensity (Hang) itself:

By propensity (propensio) I understand the subjective ground of the possibility ofan inclination (habitual desire, concupiscentia), insofar as this possibility is contin-gent for humanity in general. It is distinguished from a predisposition [Anlage]in that a propensity can indeed be innate yet may be represented as not beingsuch: it can rather be thought of (if it is good) as acquired, or (if evil) as broughtby the human being upon himself. (.–; RRT, –)

It is the propensity to substitute the maxims of the inclinations for thelaw of duty that explains man’s (empirical) predisposition to evil and thatfinds expression in the notion of his depraved or corrupt nature: ‘Thedepravity (vitiositas, pravitas) or, if one prefers, the corruption (corruptio) ofthe human heart is the propensity of the power of choice [Willkür] tomaxims that subordinate the incentives of the moral law to others (notmoral ones)’ (.; RRT, ).

If, however, it is to remain imputable to us, this propensity must itselfbe considered as a deed. Kant himself emphasises the apparent contra-diction involved in treating propensity – meant to explain our evil acts –as itself an evil act:

And yet by the concept of a propensity is understood a subjective determiningground of the power of choice that precedes every deed, and hence is itself not

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yet a deed. There would then be a contradiction in the concept of a simple pro-pensity to evil, if this expression could not somehow be taken in two differentmeanings, both nonetheless reconcilable with the concept of freedom. (.;RRT, )

It is at this point that Kant moves to solve the problem, by constructingtwo different senses for ‘deed’: first, as signifying man’s timeless nou-menal choice of the subjective nature that will predispose him to actfrom the maxims of sensibility; and, second, as signifying the empiricalacts performed by this nature in accordance with such maxims:

Now the term ‘deed’ [Tat] can in general apply just as well to the use of freedomthrough which the supreme maxim (either in favour of, or against, the law) isadopted in the power of choice [Willkür], as to the use by which the actionsthemselves (materially considered, i.e. as regards the objects of the power ofchoice) are performed in accordance with that maxim. The propensity to evilis a deed in the first sense (peccatum originarium) [original sin], and at the sametime the formal ground of every deed contrary to law in the second sense, whichmaterially resists the law and is called vice (peccatum derivatum) [derivative sin];and the first offence remains even though the second may be repeatedly avoided(because of incentives that are not part of the law). The former is an intelligibledeed, cognisable through sheer reason apart from all temporal condition; thelatter is sensible, empirical, given in time (factum phenomenon) [phenomenal deed].(.; RRT, )

Not even a commentator as erudite and sympathetic as Bohatecregards this as solving the problem. If the corruption of the heart isregarded as a propensity in order to explain our tendency to evil acts,and is then regarded as an evil act in order to remain imputable, thenthis simply sets up a circle between propensity and deed and, conse-quently, the original corruption of our nature remains unexplained(Bohatec , –). But Bohatec’s careful analysis of this circularitymisses the point of Kant’s procedure. For Kant establishes the circlebetween disposition and deed in order to present the original choice of anevil nature incomprehensible to ‘human reason’ and, in fact, to groundthe ultimate or ‘natural’ character of human evil in the very incompre-hensibility of this choice:

Now the former [intelligible deed] is said to be a bare propensity especiallywhen compared with the second [phenomenal deed], and to be innate, becauseit cannot be eradicated (since for this to occur the supreme maxim would haveto be of the good, whereas in this propensity this maxim has been assumed tobe evil). But the chief reason [why the intelligible deed must be regarded as anineradicable propensity] is that we are just as incapable of assigning a further

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

cause for why evil has corrupted the very highest maxim in us, though this isour own deed, as we are for any fundamental attribute that belongs to ournature. (.–; RRT, )

Far from indicating a weakness in Kant’s metaphysical theology, thisway of grounding the ultimate and ineradicable character of human evil– that is, grounding it in the incomprehensibility of man’s ur-choice ofan evil nature – actually holds the key to its considerable power. In thefirst place, it enables Kant to repudiate all ‘naturalistic’ conceptions ofmoral character. This applies particularly to the Epicurean anthropolo-gies of the civil philosophers. These, it will be recalled, treat man’s evildisposition as arising from his empirical nature (the passions and affects)or circumstances (bad upbringing, corrupting environment), and con-strue ethics as a practice of self-restraint designed gradually to improveman’s conduct. Against all such doctrines Kant insists that the corrup-tion of moral character is a complete and instantaneous transformationof man’s moral nature, occurring outside time. This means that therecan be no empirical explanation or mitigation of man’s evil actions, eachone of which must be regarded as if ‘he had just stepped out of the stateof innocence into evil’ (.; RRT, ). In other words, by using thecircle between propensity and deed to place evil beyond all empiricalexplanation – thereby establishing it as a metaphysical mystery – Kantseeks to place man’s moral conduct beyond the reach of all those whotreat it as a phenomenon to be managed in accordance with worldly civilimperatives. Had he lived to see it, Thomasius would of course haveregarded this as an instance of ‘secret theology’ and ‘philosophicalpriestcraft’. For Kant is not only breaching the civil philosopher’s injunc-tion on philosophical explications of matters of faith, he is doing so topreserve morality and religion as mysteries, ultimately open only tometaphysicians.

Secondly, Kant uses the incomprehensibility figure as the bridgeheadfor taking his philosophical theology onto the terrain of biblical exege-sis. Kant first explicitly introduces the biblical history of the Fall, onwhose language he has been implicitly drawing, by appealing to it as farmore suited to the transcendent rational origins of evil than any of thenaturalistic accounts. For the Christian history treats evil not as a naturalendowment but as the corruption of an originally innocent naturethrough sin, the ur-transgression of the moral law (.–; RRT, –).At the same time, however, by portraying this fall into sin as somethingthat occurs in time – rather than as a timeless event manifesting itself in

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all temporal actions – the biblical narrative seems to imply that this cor-ruption can be given an empirical explanation, even if it does this onlyto make allowances for the weakness of human reason: ‘We must nothowever seek a temporal origin for a moral nature for which we are tobe held accountable, even if this is unavoidable when we want to explainthe contingent existence of this nature (hence the Scriptures, in accor-dance with this weakness of ours, have perhaps so pictured its temporalorigin)’ (.; RRT, ).

Kant thus uses the figure of the incomprehensibility of radical evil asthe means of merging his (already tacitly Christian) metaphysical ethicswith the central biblical–Christian doctrines of sin, justification, andredemption. He achieves this end by elaborating a structurally ambiva-lent position for revealed doctrine, treating it as both required to com-pensate for the limits of human reason, yet sharing in these limits. Onthe one hand, therefore, the biblical story of the Fall answers to andcompensates for the inability of natural philosophical reason to compre-hend the original corruption of man’s moral nature: ‘Evil can have orig-inated only from moral evil (not just from the limitations of our nature);yet the original predisposition (which none other than man himselfcould have corrupted, if this corruption is to be imputed to him) is a pre-disposition to the good; for us, therefore, there is no conceivable groundfrom which moral evil could have first come into us’ (.; RRT, ). Onthe other hand, the fact that the Bible compensates for the limits of tem-poral human reason via a temporal analogy – the story of the Fall as asingular historical event rather than as an ever-present timeless occur-rence – means that it too must be purified, if reason is to overcome itstemporal–sensible limits and rise to its highest pure form.

The instrument of this purification is a specific metaphysical herme-neutics. Through this hermeneutics Kant treats biblical history as theanalogical vehicle of metaphysical truths, thence proceeding to winnowthe temporal husks of the history in order to reveal its ‘rational’ kernel,as Kant exemplifies in the following remarkable passage:

The Scriptures express this incomprehensibility [of man’s original corruption],together with a more accurate specification of the depravity of our species, inthe historical narrative thus: it projects evil into the beginning of the world, not,however, within man, but in a spirit of an originally more sublime destiny. Theabsolutely first beginning of all evil is thereby represented as incomprehensibleto us (for whence the evil in that spirit?); man, however, is represented as havinglapsed into it only through temptation, hence not as corrupted fundamentally . . .but, on the contrary, as still capable of improvement, by contrast to a tempting

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spirit, i.e. one whom the temptation of the flesh cannot be accounted as a miti-gation of guilt. And so for man, who despite a corrupted heart yet always pos-sesses a good will, there still remains hope of a return to the good from which hehas strayed. (.–; RRT, –).

Despite the neglect of it in many modern commentaries, Kant’s phil-osophical biblical hermeneutics is actually the intellectual method orspiritual exercise through which his rational theology performs the coretask of university metaphysics; that is, reconciling moral philosophy andrevealed theology within a single discipline in accordance with the apol-ogetic purposes of Christian metaphysics itself. Hence, if Kant placeshis philosophical interpretation of the Bible outside the bounds of scrip-tural exegesis, he does so in order to raise it above the latter, treating hismetaphysical hermeneutics as the means by which human reasonpurifies itself of the historical conditioning in which orthodox exegesisremains mired.

That this is so is clear from the remarks ‘Concerning the restorationof its power of the original predisposition to the good’, with which Kantconcludes Part . For these remarks, organised as a mirror image of themetaphysical analogy of the Fall into moral evil, are intended to showhow the doctrine of divine grace may be incorporated in a philosophyof religion that yet remains ‘within the boundaries of reason alone’. Likethe original corruption of human nature, the means by which humanscan restore their lost good disposition are quite incomprehensible tothem: ‘How it is possible that a naturally evil man should make himselfinto a good man surpasses all our concepts’ (.–; RRT, ). The cor-ruption of our disposition occurs outside time, and this means that noneof the improvements that we make to ourselves as temporal beings canrestore our good disposition. For this requires a complete and instanta-neous ‘revolution’ in our disposition, not the kind of gradual improve-ment in conduct recommended by the civil philosophers, which occursin accordance with the ignoble desire for happiness; for example, when‘an unjust man [converts] to civic righteousness for the sake of peace orprofit’ (.; RRT, ).

At this point, having demonstrated both the necessity and the incom-prehensibility of man’s revolutionary moral renovation, Kant begins touse the biblical language of spiritual rebirth: ‘And so a “new man” cancome about only through a kind of rebirth, as it were a new creation(John, :; compare with Genesis, :) and a change of heart’ (.;RRT, ). This provides the avenue through which Kant introduces the

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doctrine of grace into his ‘pure rational religion’. For, although man isincapable of saving himself as an empirical being – his temporal ethicalprogress always falling short of a timeless moral disposition – still, ‘if bya single unalterable decision a man reverses the supreme ground of hismaxims . . . and thereby puts on a new man’, he may render himselfreceptive to a renovation of his nature coming from a higher source.This occurs when a noumenal being, possessing the capacity for a-tem-poral intellectual intuition, intelligises the incomplete unfolding of tem-poral man’s deeds as an instantaneous unity, thereby completing themand rendering them adequate to the timeless disposition.

For him who penetrates to the intelligible ground of the heart (the ground of allmaxims of the power of choice), for him to whom this progress is a unity, i.e.for God, this is actually the same as actually being a good man (pleasing to him);and to this extent the change can be considered a revolution. For the judgmentof human beings, however, who can assess themselves and the strength of theirmaxims only by the upper hand they gain over the senses in time, the change isto be regarded only as an ever-continuing striving for the better, hence as agradual reformation of the propensity to evil, of the perverted cast of mind[Denkungsart]. (.; RRT, )

The full elaboration of this philosophical version of justification andsalvation, however, is reserved for Section of the Religion, where ittakes place via the figure of Christ. Here Kant establishes a complexanalogical interplay between his own metaphysical anthropology ofman’s intelligible and sensible natures, and Christian metaphysics ofChrist’s two natures and one person. On the one hand, he argues thatthe figure of Christ as the incarnation of the divine being in humannature provides an appropriate analogy for the incomprehensible pres-ence of the idea of the pure moral disposition – the archetype of a‘humanity pleasing to God’ – in sensible man. Kant thus executes aChristological reconfiguration of the central idea of his moral philoso-phy – the notion of the moral principle as ‘rational being in man’ –which he can do because this ‘humanity’ is already conceived as a quasi-divine being resident in the human:

In the practical faith in this Son of God (so far as he is represented as havingtaken up human nature) the human being can thus hope to become pleasing toGod (and thereby blessed). In other words, the only human being who is enti-tled to consider himself as something not unworthy of divine pleasure is the oneconscious of such a moral disposition in himself as enables him to believe andself-assuredly trust that, under similar temptations and afflictions (so far as these

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are made the touchstone of that idea), he would unswervingly cleave to thearchetype [Urbilde] of humanity and, by faithful emulation, remain true to hisexemplar. (.; RRT, –)

On the other hand, we must not think of the figure of Christ as literallysignifying the embodiment of God in man at some point in time; for thiswould result in a God–man whose holiness is so far above the humanthat it could serve no moral purpose for us. We must therefore regard theincarnation as an analogical representation of Christ’s personification ofthe pure moral disposition ‘through his teachings and actions’, whichoccurs in us at all times. This practical representation of the moral prin-ciple in Christ the human teacher thus makes divine righteousness avail-able for human appropriation, even though this righteousness ‘is not ourown’, and ‘rendering this appropriation comprehensible to us is stillfraught with great difficulties’ (.; RRT, ).

In fact there are three such difficulties (.–; RRT, –). First,how can man become adequate to the personified image of the holy lawin him given that ‘the distance between the goodness which we ought toeffect in ourselves and the evil from which we start is . . . infinite, and, sofar as the deed is concerned . . . is not exhaustible in any time?’ Next,given that we can have no empirical insight into our moral condition andmoral fate – such as the images of heaven and hell appear to providethose seeking incentives for their conduct – how can we find the assu-rance and comfort that heartens us to maintain a good way of life?Finally, given that each man is responsible for fulfilling the commands ofduty, yet that man’s corrupt condition means that he must depend onanother’s righteousness to render him adequate to the holy law, how canhe atone for his own corruption through the goodness of another? Inposing and resolving these problems Kant seeks to incorporate thecentral doctrines of Protestant theology – rebirth, justification throughChrist, and vicarious satisfaction – into his hermeneutic metaphysics.

Kant has already sketched an answer to the rebirth problem in hismetaphysics of grace, given at the end of Part . The only differencebetween that discussion and this one is that here Kant uses the figure ofChrist’s ‘two natures and one person’ in order to show how the gracerequired for moral rebirth can be both supranatural yet internal to theperson. In combining a divine (noumenal) and a human nature, thefigure of Christ offers an analogical image of the manner in which ‘pureintellectual intuition’ renders the deed adequate to the disposition withina single person (.–; RRT, –). For its part, the problem of finding

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comfort in Christ can be solved if we treat the images of heaven and hellnot as objective incentives, but as practical analogies for the steadfastnesswith which we should hold to the moral disposition by living a good life(.–; RRT, –). Finally, Kant makes the most elaborate use ofhis metaphysical hermeneutics to offer a ‘rational religious’ interpreta-tion of the doctrine of vicarious atonement. This obstacle to the humanappropriation of divine goodness can be overcome if we treat Christ’ssuffering and atonement as an analogy for the suffering that all men mustundergo during the process of moral regeneration. Through thisanalogy, the relation between man’s noumenal and phenomenal selves isregarded as simulating the relation between Christ and man:

The emergence from the corrupted into the good disposition is, in itself (as ‘thedeath of the old man’, ‘the crucifying of the flesh’), a sacrifice and entrance intoa long train of life’s ills. These the new man undertakes in the disposition of theSon of God, that is, simply for the sake of the good, yet they are really due aspunishments to someone else, namely the old man (who morally is anotherbeing). Although physically (considered in his empirical character as a sensiblebeing) he is still the same human being liable to punishment and must be judgedas such by a moral tribunal and hence by himself; yet, in his new disposition (asan intelligible being), in the sight of a divine judge for whom the dispositiontakes the place of the deed, he is morally another being. And this dispositionwhich he has incorporated in all its purity, like unto the purity of the Son ofGod – or (if we personify this idea) this very Son of God – bears as vicarioussubstitute the debt of sin for him, and also for all who believe (practically) inhim. (.; RRT, –)

Far from being a rational purification of revealed theology, therefore,Kant’s philosophical theology is the means by which he attaches the elitemetaphysical paideia to the broader culture of biblical Christianity.Through his improvisation on the figure of the incomprehensibility ofman’s moral corruption and regeneration, Kant effects both a religiousreconfiguration of his metaphysical anthropology and a metaphysicalreinterpretation of the central Christian doctrines of rebirth andjustification. If he thereby achieves a philosophical rationalisation of therevealed doctrines, then he simultaneously makes their sacralisingpowers of conversion and purification available for his practice of spec-ulative self-transformation.

Both dimensions of the change are present in Kant’s insistence that,while the purified doctrines of radical evil, rebirth, and justification donot increase our theoretical understanding, they nonetheless play acrucial role in ‘moral ascetics’ (.–; RRT, ). They do so by destroy-ing confidence in the naturalistic ethics of moral self-restraint. For those

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who learn to govern only their external conduct – for example, presum-ably, the Königsberg law students undergoing a Pufendorfian orThomasian (quasi-Epicurean) ethical formation – remain evil at heart.In this way Kant’s students, destined to staff the Lutheran churches andschools of East and West Prussia, are compelled to seek moral salvationin a profound and total transformation of the inner self, to be achievedthrough the self-purifying method of Kant’s own metaphysical herme-neutics (.–; RRT, –). In other words, Kant’s ‘moral religion’emerges not as a rational purification of revealed Christian doctrine, butas a use of such doctrine to reconfigure the metaphysical paideia in amanner that would better allow it to function as the religion of a specificintellectual elite.

Kant and his modern followers regard his rational theological doc-trines as ultimately grounded in a fully rational principle – the formalidea of the moral law – hence as supplements to an autonomous ethics.We have shown, however, that his moral principle is itself a Christianmetaphysical construct whose ultimate role also lies in the domain of‘moral ascetics’. Here it forms part of a spiritual exercise designed toturn individuals away from worldly prudential ethics towards an ethosof contemplative self-purification. Kant’s religious reconfiguration ofthis construct, via the rationalised doctrines of radical evil, rebirth, andjustification, is thus designed to allow his metaphysics itself to functionas the vehicle of self-sanctification and moral renewal.

Seen in this light, Kant’s philosophical theology – like his moral phi-losophy more broadly – must be regarded as a powerful renewal ofmetaphysical ethics against the detranscendentalising doctrines of thecivil philosophers. Through his philosophical simulacra of the doctrinesof sin, justification, and moral regeneration, Kant seeks to destroy allethics grounded in man’s indifferent or passionate nature – that is, allethics whose horizon is the management of man’s external conduct incivil life. Further, through this synthesis of philosophy and theology, uni-versity metaphysics is able to resume its long campaign to resacralise pol-itics, insisting that the state serve an end far higher than security – in factthe end of man’s moral regeneration. Kant provides his blueprint for theresacralised state in the second half of the Religion.

.. Building the moral state

The transition from Kant’s metaphysical hermeneutics (rational theol-ogy) to his metaphysics of the church (philosophical ecclesiology) occurs

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in the opening pages of Part of the Religion. The doctrine throughwhich he effects this transition – the doctrine of the corrupting influenceof human society – might be described as Rousseauean, were it notfor the likelihood that, in formulating this doctrine, both philosopherswere drawing on the same metaphysical conception of an ideal moralcommunity.

In Kant’s version, as soon as human beings begin to associate witheach other, they are assailed by ‘envy, addiction to power, avarice, andthe malignant inclinations associated with these’; for, given their predis-position to satisfy their sensuous inclinations, human beings simply ashuman beings ‘will mutually corrupt each other’s moral disposition andmake one another evil’ (.–; RRT, ). Individual moral striving isincapable of combating this social corruption. Bearing in mind the inca-pacity of the Rechtsstaat to touch the inner disposition, human beings aretherefore duty-bound to form a society that is both founded on the lawsof virtue and is capable of making men virtuous. The fact that these lawsmust be publicly proclaimed and adhered to means, however, that thismoral union will also be a civil society, consisting in fact of the membersof the polity, but organised in accordance with virtue rather than coer-cion:

In accordance with its leitmotif, a union of human beings merely under the lawsof virtue can be called an ethical society and, so far as these laws are public, anethico-civil (in contrast to a juridico-civil) society, or an ethical commonwealth[gemein Wesen]. It can exist in the midst of a political commonwealth and evenbe made up of all the members of the latter (indeed, without the foundation ofa political commonwealth, it could never be brought into existence by humanbeings). It has however a special unifying principle of its own (virtue) and hencea form and constitution essentially distinct from those of the other. There isnevertheless a certain analogy between the two . . . and with respect to thisanalogy the ethical commonwealth can also be called an ethical state, i.e. akingdom of virtue (of the good principle). (.–; RRT, )

In marked deviation from Pufendorf ’s ‘collegial’ and Thomasius’ ‘ter-ritorial’ conception of the church, Kant does not regard this ethico-civilsociety as one of several such associations, existing as private corpora-tions inside the state and under its control. Rather, he treats it as the onetrue form in which the people may be morally governed, as a hiddenmoral state co-extensive with the political state, and dedicated toremoulding the latter in its own image. For, from the metaphysical stand-point, human beings in the political state are in an ‘ethical state ofnature’, ceaselessly corrupting and preying on each other. This means

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that they must leave the political state, submitting their wills to a rulerwho governs not just their conduct but their inner dispositions: ‘Hencean ethical commonwealth is conceivable only as a people under divinecommands, i.e. as a people of God, and indeed in accordance with thelaws of virtue’ (.; RRT, ). Here we see the nucleus of Kant’s pro-gramme to resacralise the state, which takes shape as an anti-political‘enclave politics’, eroding the desacralised state of the civil philosophersfrom within – in fact from within the state-pacified zone of civil society(Koselleck ).

Just as all societies under public laws entail the subordination of theirmembers, so too does the ethical society, whose members constitute acongregation under the direction of teachers and spiritual shepherds.Adapting the Protestant topos of the invisible and visible church to hisown metaphysical ends, Kant stipulates that the intelligible ideal of amoral community under divine law constitutes the ‘church invisible’,while the existing ‘church visible’ is to be seen as the empirical approxi-mation of this ideal. Given the need to the close the gap between theempirical and the ideal, then: ‘The true (visible) church is one that dis-plays the (moral) kingdom of God on earth so far as the latter can berealised through human beings’ (.; RRT, ). Accordingly, saysKant – improvising on the standard formula of the ‘one, holy, catholicand apostolic church’ – the true visible church must be universal (sub-suming all confessions); pure (grounded in morality alone); free (inter-nally and with regard to the state); and unchanging (grounded in a prioriprinciples which may be publicly proclaimed ‘as it were through a bookof laws’) (.–; RRT, ). Kant’s conception of a metaphysicalreunification of the faith may thus be regarded as an updating ofLeibniz’s reunion project.

Kant’s use of the topos of the visible and invisible church differssignificantly from that of Pufendorf and Thomasius, this differencepointing to the gulf separating the metaphysical and civil conceptions ofthe governance of civil society. For Pufendorf and Thomasius, we canrecall (., .), the invisible church consists of an unspecifiable commu-nity of teachers and auditors, held together by bonds of love and emu-lation, and by a faith incapable of philosophical formulation or publicproclamation. For its part, the visible church consists of the plurality ofhistorical confessions, tolerated by the state as voluntary associations incivil society, but precluded from even the smallest share in civil author-ity through the state’s constitutional indifference to the truth of theirteachings. As far as the civil philosophers are concerned, the notion of a

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‘true visible church’ or an ‘ethico-civil commonwealth’ – that is, a civilsociety purporting to make men moral as well as law-abiding – is a dan-gerous contradiction in terms. Arguing that the political neutralisationof religion and society required the segregation of the ‘kingdom oftruth’ and the civil state, Pufendorf and Thomasius reject the figure ofthe church as a model for civil society, justifying state control of the‘visible’ churches as secular institutions subordinate to the end of socialpeace.

Kant’s way of separating church and state – ‘But woe to the legisla-tor who would want to bring about through coercion a polity directed toethical ends!’ (.; RRT, ) – thus points in a different direction toPufendorf ’s and Thomasius’. Like the Lutheran ecclesiastical juristswho preceded him, Kant draws this distinction primarily to protect the‘true visible church’ from political governance, thereby preserving itsrole as a (non-coercive) polity directed to ethical ends (Schlaich ,–). The civil philosophers, however, draw this distinction in orderto defend the state from religious infiltration, and to protect individualChristians from confessional coercion (Heckel , ; Wiebking ,–). Kant’s use of the figure of the church to conceive of a morallygoverned civil society is thus inimical to the central theological, juridi-cal, and political postulates informing the civil philosophers’ strategy forthe descralisation of the state. We shall now see that this is becauseKant’s moral communitarianism is the direct expression of his rationaltheology; that is, of his metaphysical hermeneutics as an intellectual dis-cipline designed to reconfigure the culture and role of the universitymetaphysician.

Kant constructs his conception of a faith capable of founding a moralsociety or ‘universal church’ – the ‘pure religious faith’ or ‘pure rationalfaith’ – via the distinction between statutory and ‘purely moral’ laws.Unlike Thomasius’ use of this Protestant distinction, however, Kant’s isdesigned not to divorce private morality from public religious creeds but,in fact, to reconcile the two. This is because Kant’s distinction is gov-erned by his metaphysical anthropology – rather than by a political-jurisprudential analysis of confessional religion – and is oriented to theharmonisation of moral philosophy and religion. Kant thus treats credalreligion – that is, the religion grounded in revealed historical doctrinesand oriented to gaining God’s grace and favour through public ritual –as arising from man’s lower sensible nature. The moral laws though aregrounded in each individual’s reason, and may be acceded to withoutany invocation of God – save that of course that which comes throughman’s awareness of the holiness of the laws themselves, and from his

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need for the Divinity to procure their full realisation in the world(.–; RRT, –).

This way of drawing the distinction between revealed statutory andpure moral laws sets the scene for its overcoming through Kant’s centralspeculative exercise – the posing and reconciling of an antinomy orcontradiction. On the one hand, the moral law requires no statutoryrites for the worship of God: ‘For in pure religious faith it all comes downto what constitutes the essence [Materie] of God’s veneration, namely theobservance of all duties as his commands, which occurs in the moral dis-position’. For ‘citizens in a divine state on earth’, though, things aredifferent: ‘A church, on the other hand, which is the union of manyhuman beings with many dispositions in a moral commonwealth, needsa public mode of obligation – a certain kind of experience-based eccle-siastical form, which, being contingent and manifold, cannot be recog-nised as a duty without divine statutory laws’ (.; RRT, ). Far fromleading Kant to follow Thomasius in repudiating the very idea of apublic statutory religion of divine dispensation – a move Kant calls‘arrogant’ – this antinomy points him in a quite different direction. Infact it leads him to seek a credal religion that contains the revealed stat-utes required for the ‘moulding of men into an ethical commonwealth’,but that also harbours the pure moral religion within it, in a form thatallows for its refining over time, as men themselves are refined.

He does not have to look far afield. Given that men must be mouldedinto an ethical commonwealth through ecclesiastical statutes before theycan accede to the pure moral meaning contained in these statutes, then,Kant argues, only a scriptural religion could possess the required histor-ical durability and powers of diffusion. Further, among the religions ofthe book, only (New Testament) Christianity contains the pure moralreligion within it. This means that the Christian Scriptures and thechurch founded on them are providential:

How fortunate, when one such book, fallen into human hands, contains com-plete, besides its statutes as laws of faith, also the purest moral doctrine of relig-ion [reinste moralische Religionslehre] – a doctrine which can be brought into perfectharmony with those statutes (which are the vehicles of its introduction). In thisevent, both because of the end thereby to be attained, and the difficulty ofmaking intelligible through natural laws the enlightenment of the human raceproceeding from it, the book can command the same regard as a revelation.(.; RRT, )

The pure religious faith capable of grounding a universal moral societyis thus not biblical Christianity as such. Rather, it consists in the herme-neutic recovery of the pure moral faith from the ‘empirical religion’ in

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which it was first introduced as a compensation for man’s sensuous under-standing: ‘Now to unite the foundation of a moral faith . . . with such anempirical faith which, to all appearances, chance has dealt us, we requirean interpretation of the revelation we happen to have, i.e. a thorough-going understanding of it in a sense that harmonises with the universalpractical rules of a pure religion of reason [reinen Vernunftreligion]’ (.;RRT, ).

In this audacious move Kant thus grounds the historical purificationof Christian statutes, responsible for creating moral society, in the ratio-nal purification of revealed doctrine through his own metaphysical her-meneutics. In doing so he not only precludes the state interpreting theBible for its ends (contra Hobbes), he also accords priority to the meta-physical hermeneut (the ‘scriptural interpreter’) over the biblical exegete(the ‘scriptural scholar’). For the former opens the door to humanity’smoral future by ‘forcing’ the religion of reason from its historical vehicle,whereas the latter’s task is only to present the historical doctrine thatcontains man’s moral past:

There is, therefore, no norm of ecclesiastical faith except Scripture, and noother expositor of it except pure religion of reason and scriptural scholarship(which deals with the historical side). And of these two, the first alone is authen-tic and valid for the whole world, whereas the second is merely doctrinal; its aimbeing the transformation of the ecclesiastical faith for a given people at a giventime into a definite and self-maintaining system. (.; RRT, )

Kant regards this programme for the progressive metaphysicalpurification of biblical Christianity as resolving what he takes to be thecentral cultural antagonism of his time – roughly that betweenProtestant religiosity and civil ethics. On the one hand, says Kant, thereare those who, conscious that the renovation of man’s corrupt naturerequires a transcendent influx of righteousness, maintain faith in thevicarious justification revealed in Bible, but thereby slight the imperativeto live a good life. On the other hand, there are those who cultivate agood way of life but, in refusing to accept the need for a vicarious reno-vation of their moral natures, lack the faith required to realise theirmoral end: ‘The first principle is accused (often not unjustly) of ritualsuperstition, which knows how to reconcile a criminal life conductwith religion; the second, of naturalistic unbelief, which combinesindifference, or, indeed, even antagonism to all revelation with an other-wise perhaps exemplary conduct of life’ (.–; RRT, ).

According to Kant, only his metaphysical hermeneutics shows theway out of this cultural impasse. It does so, as we have already seen, by

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insisting (against ‘naturalistic unbelief ’) that faith in the revealed figureof the Saviour is indeed necessary for the renovation of man’s moral dis-position. But it simultaneously argues (against ‘ritual superstition’) thatChrist is actually an ‘archetype of reason’ in us, which means that wequalify for grace only through living the good life. It is therefore meta-physical hermeneutics itself that controls the passage from credal eccle-siastical religion to pure moral faith, thereby constituting the religionrequired for the ethical society in which man will reach his highest moraldestiny – the perfection of his moral disposition through the kingdom ofGod on earth:

The basis for the transition to the new order of things must lie in the principleof the pure religion of reason, as a revelation (though not an empirical one) per-manently taking place within all human beings, and this basis, once graspedafter mature reflection, will be carried to effect, inasmuch as it is to be a humanwork, through gradual reform . . . We have reason to say, however, that ‘theKingdom of God is come into us’, even if only the principle of the gradual tran-sition from ecclesiastical faith to the universal religion of reason, and so to a(divine) ethical state on earth, has put down roots universally and, somewhere,also in public – though the actual setting up of this state is still infinitely removedfrom us. (.; RRT, )

It is clear from this passage that Kant regards his hermeneuticmetaphysics as differing fundamentally from both orthodox biblicalChristianity and naturalistic ethics. He presumes this metaphysics to bedependent neither on inculcated doctrine nor on man’s empirical moralnature, representing instead the self-revelation of divine reason occur-ring timelessly ‘within all human beings’.

In fact Kant constructs an explicit argument to this effect in the fourthand final part of the Religion. He does so through one last antinomy, thistime between natural religion and erudite or learned religion. Learnedreligion is dependent on the transmission, by a clerical elite, of a set ofhistorically revealed doctrines held to be necessary for salvation. It istherefore always the religion of a particular people and lacks the univer-sal communicability necessary to qualify as the universal religion of aworld ethical society. Natural religion, however, because it can be arrivedat by all individuals reflecting on their own moral natures, is in a differentposition:

Natural religion, as morality (with reference to the freedom of the subject),combined with the concept of that which can actualise its ultimate end (theconcept of God as moral originator of the world), and referred to a duration ofthe human being proportionate to the entirety of this end (immortality), is a

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pure practical concept of reason which, despite its infinite fruitfulness, yet pre-supposes only so little a capacity for theoretical reason that, practically, we cansufficiently convince every human being of it and everyone can expect its effectat least, as duty. (.; RRT, –)

In this formulation we can of course recognise an elliptical presenta-tion of core concepts common to Kant’s metaphysics of morals andreligion. In comparison with Pufendorf ’s and Thomasius’ conception ofnatural religion – which reduces to the bare maxims of loving God andone’s neighbour – Kant’s thus conceals a sophisticated doctrinalspecificity, focused in the intellectualist conception of the moral law andthe three religious postulates required for its realisation. Moreover,unlike theirs, Kant’s natural religion is not intended to be a non-salvificsocial pedagogy, radically distinct from ecclesiastical religion, and understate control. On the contrary, it is envisaged as a morally regenerativepure rational faith destined to be reconciled with ecclesiastical faith in areligion that will outstrip all political supervision. For, Kant argues, whileerudite religion can indeed degenerate into a sacramental clerical prac-tice lacking all inner moral efficacy, the limits of man’s sensuous under-standing mean that he nonetheless requires the inculcation of publicdoctrines in order to begin the task of moral self-transformation. Thisneed not be a problem, however, if the doctrinal formulas simply intro-duce an intellectual discipline that men would have eventually imposedon themselves:

Accordingly a religion can be natural, yet also revealed, if it is so constitutedthat human beings could and ought to have arrived at it on their own throughthe mere use of their reason, even though they would not have come to it asearly or as extensively as is required. Hence a revelation of it at a given timeand place might be wise and very advantageous to the human race, for then,once the thereby introduced religion is at hand and has been made publiclyknown, everyone can henceforth convince himself of its truth by himself andhis own reason. (.–; RRT, )

Once again Kant both poses and resolves the antinomy through hismetaphysical anthropology. For this is what allows him to treat revealedChristian doctrine as the empirical form in which man’s divine intelli-gible being reveals itself to his material self, still mired in the prudentiallife of corrupt society. This revelation triggers the process of speculativehermeneutic purification that will eventually, at the end of historicaltime, make revealed doctrine redundant. Once again, Kant uses thisanthropology to induce the desire for a profound reshaping of the self –this time carried out through the hermeneutic exercise itself, and

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designed to form a specific inner deportment towards both public sac-ramental Christianity and personal everyday conduct.

Indeed, it is only through the formation of this deportment that theantinomy between revealed credal and natural moral religion isresolved. For this allows those undergoing the metaphysical paideia toparticipate in such sacraments as baptism, holy communion, and publicprayer as morally edifying contemplative occasions, rather than as mag-ically transformative rituals. Yet it also allows them to treat everydayactions as an occasion for religious observance. All such actions, it willbe recalled, are to be regarded as repeating the fall from innocence tocorruption, and thus as offering the opportunity for the renovation ofsensible man’s moral nature through self-transcending participation inhis higher intelligible being (.–; RRT, –). This is of coursein sharp contrast to Thomasius’ Staatskirchenrecht which treats the sacra-ments, one and all, as ‘indifferents’ or adiaphora. According to the civilphilosopher, the state may tolerate sacramental religions for the pur-poses of maintaining religious calm, but it must never grant any of thempublic recognition, or allow them to dictate the terms of civil ethicalgovernance.

We have already seen that, far from being something that ordinaryconsciousness arrives at of its own accord – independent of doctrinalinculcation, and therefore rationally and universally – awareness ofKant’s inner moral principle is induced through a powerful metaphysi-cal paideia. This is a spiritual pedagogy that requires individuals to relateto their true selves as pure intelligible beings, tied for the moment to theirimpure sensible natures, but destined for purifying self-recovery throughthe speculative exercises of metaphysics. In making his moral principleinto the core of his conception of natural religion, Kant was not there-fore showing how revealed sacramental religion would be purifiedthrough progressive recovery of a rational principle already contained‘within all human beings’. Rather, confronted by a biblical Christianityunleashed from controlling orthodoxy – through the desacralisation ofthe state and the broader dissemination of religious writings – he wasoutlining a programme that would allow university metaphysics todefend its claim to provide an account of the meaning of religion which‘alone is authentic and valid for the whole world’.

Under these changed cultural circumstances this would no longerbe achieved through the proclamation of definitive and binding doctri-nal interpretations. Instead, Kant argues, the unification of the faithwill take place by qualifying metaphysicians – now in the guise of the

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philosophical–historical hermeneut – to undertake the continuousreinterpretation of doctrine in accordance with their diagnosis ofhumanity’s current level of spiritual development. The genius of Kant’shermeneutic metaphysics is that it allows the elite religion of the univer-sity (Kant’s own metaphysical paideia) and the broader biblical–religiousculture to be continuously adjusted in relation to each other. This adjust-ment, of course, remains under the control of metaphysical hermeneuthimself who, through his own speculative reinterpretation of Scripture,displays the current stage of the ongoing revelation of intelligible beingin empirical history.

We should be sceptical then of those accounts that treat Kant’smetaphysics as occupying a higher philosophical–historical level thanother such late-eighteenth-century religious–intellectual movements asNeology. Stephen Lestition, for example, has argued that Kant’s formalmoral philosophy allowed him to grasp the philosophical–historicalunderpinnings of these rival movements, and that his mastery of antin-omy allowed him to understand the historical dialectic governing theirfuture reconciliation (Lestition ). In fact, this kind of interpretationbears an uncanny resemblance to Kant’s own claim to discern the rela-tive historical maturity of human reason. We have shown, to the con-trary, that Kant’s formal philosophy may itself be regarded as a spiritualexercise competing with other such (religious) exercises. Further, we haveseen that Kant’s antinomies – such as those between external orthodoxyand inner moral faith, and between ecclesiastical and natural religion –far from capturing an intrinsic historical dialectic, in fact seek to imposesuch a dialectic as a means of absorbing and neutralising the rivals toKantian metaphysics. In this regard, Kant’s religious philosophy fellquite naturally under the Wöllner edict, concerned as it was to preventsectarian theologians and intellectuals from public proselytising.

In developing his intellectual and cultural strategy, Kant was simulta-neously attacking the rival strategy that had been elaborated byPufendorf and Thomasius. For theirs was premised on partitioning areligion beyond all reach of philosophical formulation and public proc-lamation, from a politics whose singular end of security dictates itsindifference to religious truth and ensures its immunity to moral critique.Kant’s Religion, though, is dedicated to elaborating a metaphysical her-meneutics capable of functioning as the public theology of an ‘ethicalcommonwealth’, and thereby evading the desacralisation of politicssought by Pufendorf and Thomasius. Kant’s programme thus preservesthe longstanding role of university metaphysics as the intellectual archi-

Kant and the preservation of metaphysics

tect of confessional society; that is, society conceived of as a single ‘truevisible church’, or, as the morally perfecting ‘kingdom of God on earth’.Given the actual post-confessional religious indifference of the state,though, Kant conceives the ethical state in a new way. He construes itnot in terms of the political enforcement of the true religion, but as‘rational religion’s’ gradual displacement of the state altogether, throughthe creation of a people no longer in need of political coercion.

From here arose the anti-political enclave politics so central tomodern dialectical history and ‘critical’ social theory. These disciplinescould take over Kant’s philosophical hermeneutics and use it to diagnosethe historical signs of progress towards a moral or rational society, typi-cally configured in terms of non-coercive intellectual communicationand community, or a ‘rational public sphere’. This is one of the mainforms in which university metaphysics has been carried into the nine-teenth and twentieth centuries, allowing the Christian–metaphysicaldemand for the resacralisation of politics to be voiced in the registers ofdialectical philosophical history and anti-positivist social theory.

The pure religion of reason

Postscript: the kingdom of truth and the civil kingdom

We began this book by contesting the view of early modern Germanintellectual history as a dialectical progression leading to Kant. We havesince discovered that this historiography is anything but a mistake. It is,in fact, a central weapon in the ongoing intellectual civil war betweencivil and metaphysical philosophy.

This historiography first appeared in the dialectics through whichKant represents his own transcendence of the philosophies that pre-ceded his. In using the figure of homo duplex to organise his intellectualantinomies, Kant was able to reduce the colliding cultural worlds seenat Halle to a series of neatly paired intellectual oppositions – betweenrationalism and voluntarism, idealism and empiricism – which could beresolved through the cultivation of a particular intellectual deportment.This method was then used by his early adherents – such as the theolo-gian Carl Friedrich Stäudlin – to write Kant-centred histories of philos-ophy (Hochstrasser , –). Like Kant, Stäudlin was centrallypreoccupied with reconciling moral philosophy and Christian theology;and he was among the first to use the metaphysical hermeneutics ofKant’s Religion to marginalise Pufendorf for ‘failing’ to achieve this goal(Stäudlin ). Never forgiven for its detranscendentalising of ethicsand desacralising of politics, at the end of the eighteenth century civilphilosophy was driven from Protestant arts faculties by Kant’s renewalof Schulmetaphysik, finding itself increasingly restricted to the teaching oflaw and politics. If, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, manyhistorians still treat the civil philosophers as failing to reconcile rational-ism and voluntarism in a morally grounded politics, this is surely testi-mony to the long hegemony of post-Kantian philosophical history,which is perhaps only now beginning to break down.

In making its own contribution to this disintegrative process, this bookhas offered a redescription of Kant’s practical philosophy, including itsdialectics. Kant’s philosophy is best understood as a modification of a

longstanding metaphysical paideia, grounded in the pathos of homo duplex,and dedicated to the ethos of intellectual self-purification. By presentinghuman experience as governed by a realm of pure intelligences, whilesimultaneously insisting that this realm lies beyond human understand-ing, Kant’s metaphysical anthropology is the programme for a particu-lar kind of intellectual grooming. This is one that requires its bearers tomaintain faith in the metaphysical noumena, but only as regulative‘ideas of reason’ or as ‘deontological’ moral laws. At the same time, thoseundergoing this formation must accept the independence of empiricalexperience, but only as the mode in which the noumena appear to abeing with our ‘human’ kind of sensibility.

The grooming of this ‘critical’ intellectual deportment – surely amodern form of Hadot’s Platonic exercises in ‘mental concentration andrenunciation of the sensible world’ – holds the key to understanding thecultural role and historical significance of Kant’s philosophy. In formingan intellectual estate capable of both entertaining the positive sciences(of law, politics, theology), while simultaneously treating them as mani-festations of a recessive power of creative intellection, this philosophywas responsible for a momentous double transformation of intellectualculture: the simultaneous rationalisation of religion and sacralisation ofreason. With this transformation, German university metaphysics wasable to reassert its claim to moral oversight of civil ethics, law, and poli-tics. These sciences would now all be subject to the imperious gaze of apersonage who claimed privileged access to the pure laws from whichthey devolved on the basis of his own intellectual purity – the ‘critical’intellectual.

It was this reincarnation of the metaphysical personage that recom-mended Kant’s philosophical theology to modernising theologians likeStäudlin. Not only did the critical deportment permit the reconciliationof moral philosophy and Christian theology – through the subordina-tion of civil conduct to a quasi-divine intellectual self-governance – italso sealed the cultural settlement that Neology sought between meta-physical rationalism and theological voluntarism. It did so via theanthropology of self-legislating rational being; for this assimilated theo-logical voluntarism while simultaneously transposing moral regenera-tion into the philosophical register, where it could be administered bymetaphysicians. In this way, the ‘Kantian settlement’ allowed universitymetaphysics to re-attach itself to the cultural power of ecclesiasticalProtestantism, by providing ‘rational’ explications of biblical doctrinesfor the religious intelligentsia. At the same time, it allowed Christian

The kingdom of truth and the civil kingdom

metaphysics to penetrate civil ethics, law, and politics. Here metaphysicswould appear in the form of the ‘critical’ recovery of the pure moral law,the pure principle of justice, and the ideal general will that would even-tually lead to the ‘withering away of the state’.

This transformation in our understanding of Kant’s practical philos-ophy lies at the centre of the essay that we now bring to a close. It wasin order to effect this change that we sketched the history of metaphys-ics as an academic Lebensform (.), tracing its modifications throughLeibniz (.) and Wolff to Kant, whose formal–transcendental ethics wedescribed as an elaboration of the metaphysical paideia (., .). At thesame time, through a parallel reconstruction – by treating its anthropol-ogy as an alternative irrefutable mode of spiritual grooming – we havebeen able to rescue civil philosophy from its present marginalisation inthe history of moral philosophy (., ., .). In stepping outside theengrossing but self-enclosed theatre of dialectical philosophical history,we have been able to encounter the ‘rival enlightenments’ of civil andmetaphysical philosophy in their true unreconciled forms. Each, we haveargued, may be regarded as an attempt to reconfigure the relationsbetween religious and civil governance in the wake of their politi-cal–jurisprudential separation, but in divergent forms and in accordancewith conflicting interests. Each executed this reconfiguration via areshaping of the academic disciplines through which religious and civilintellectuals acquired their characteristic ethical deportments and intel-lectual expertise.

Herein lies the significance of their two fundamentally different atti-tudes to the relation between theology and ‘philosophy’. In continuingto hybridise the two fields – whether via Leibniz’s monadology, Wolff’srational psychology and theology, or Kant’s metaphysical ethics andphilosophical theology – early modern university metaphysics main-tained its demand for the resacralisation of politics, in the form of amorally grounded state. It did so by treating the political community asthe devolved ‘sensible’ form of the moral or spiritual community. As aresult, in rationalist political metaphysics, political and legal rule appearas a debased mode of governance, required only until the moral com-munity regains its capacity for reciprocal collective self-governance,which will appear in the form of the general will of a total or ‘unlimitedsociety’. At this point the need for law and state will wither away, dis-placed by the moral sovereignty of the community of rational beings,who, in accordance with a revivified political ecclesiology, will form an‘ethico-civil society’ or ‘kingdom of God on earth’.

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Conversely, in partitioning theology and ‘philosophy’ – via their ‘spir-itualist’ theology and statist natural law – Pufendorf and Thomasiuswere seeking to separate the pursuit of moral regeneration from theexercise of civil sovereignty. Their object was to reshape the academicintelligibility of civil authority, treating it in terms of the maintenance ofsocial peace by a government exercising supreme power in a religiouslyor morally indifferent manner. In making this task central to his naturallaw, Pufendorf was giving philosophical expression to the desacralisationof politics that had been achieved by the political jurists seeking a wayout of religious civil war. The civil philosophers were thus not attempt-ing to institute a new integral moral–political governance of a totalsociety – one based on a secular political philosophy – but to separatethe maintenance of political order from the pursuit of moral regenera-tion. From now on these were to belong to different moral personae –the sovereign–subject and the teacher–auditor – inhabiting incommen-surate moral worlds: the civil kingdom and the kingdom of truth. Thelatter would be unconditionally free unless it disturbed social peace; theformer would be governed ‘absolutely’, on the condition that the sove-reign power remained indifferent to all transcendent truths.

Given our fundamental concern to demonstrate the intellectual andinstitutional autonomy of civil and metaphysical philosophy, we shallnot, of course, be closing this book by anticipating their future harmon-isation. There is no shortage of such anticipations. Rather we shall con-clude by reprising our prime object, to contribute to a chastenedhistorical understanding of these cultures in their unreconciled state. Wedo so by sketching four themes for further research.

Our first theme is that of the statist or authoritarian character of earlymodern liberalism. We have touched on this theme several times and, ofcourse, the notion of an authoritarian liberalism is familiar to readers ofCarl Schmitt (Cristi ). Pierre Manent and Blandine Kriegel havealso illuminated our understanding of this issue (Kriegel ; Manent). Despite this, to the extent that it remains committed to a politicsfounded in rational moral self-governance, much modern moral andpolitical philosophy remains uncomprehending of the statist characterof early modern liberalism. As we have seen, however, Pufendorf andThomasius did not derive the founding liberal rights – to security of theperson and freedom of religion – from the moral capacities of rationalindividuals or moral communities. Rather they grounded them in thestate’s capacity to pacify such communities, by withdrawing civil powerfrom the moral domain and concentrating it solely in the maintenance

The kingdom of truth and the civil kingdom

of external order (., .). Conversely, early modern doctrines ofpopular sovereignty were typically not liberal, as we saw in the case ofAlthusius (.). In grounding the exercise of civil sovereignty in a com-munal moral will – a will that could only be formed through the avail-able religious pedagogies – these theories were incapable of making theseparation between moral and political governance on which the firstliberal rights depended. Under these circumstances, in which the legiti-macy of civil power is held to depend on the general will of a self-per-fecting moral community, it is always possible to envisage such powerbeing exercised to ensure the existence of this will.

After the Kantian cultural settlement, the statist character of earlymodern liberalism vanished from sight in post-Kantian arts and theol-ogy faculties. At this point, the central reality of historical liberalism –that personal security and religious toleration depended on the pacifica-tion of fratricidal moral communities by a desacralised state – passedinto the metaphysical looking-glass. On the other side of this invertingmirror – held up to society by the new alliance of rationalist philosophyand enlightened theology – security and toleration appeared as rightsagainst the state, achieved by self-governing moral communities. Fromthe end of the eighteenth century onwards, the state’s liberal withdrawalfrom the moral domain would thus be subject to a profound and system-atic misunderstanding. It would appear in post-Kantian histories of lib-eralism not as the means by which the state achieved the religiousneutrality required to govern confessionally divided moral communities– not, that is, as the exclusion of the church from the exercise of civilpower – but as an expression of the moral community’s transcendentresistance to the state.

In considering Jacobi’s wide-eyed claim that it was the ‘ceaseless striv-ing of reason’, not law and state, that put an end to the wars of religion– and in recalling his Kantian relegation of all ‘externally imposed laws’in favour of those self-imposed by free rational beings – we obtained asnapshot of the self-deluding history that ‘critical’ intellectuals wouldentertain in the wake of Kant’s inversion of the dependency of freedomon security (Jacobi , –). For it was not philosophical reason thatput an end to religious civil war but, in fact, law and politics, and theforms of reason peculiar to them. Specifically, as Heckel has argued, itwas positive Staatsrecht that permitted the formation of a ‘non-confes-sional or supra-confessional order of coexistence between the two greatconfessional blocks’ (Heckel , ). This was achieved, ironicallyenough, by treating law as externally imposed for the sake of peace,

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hence as neutral with regard to inner moral truth. Only inside this polit-ically imposed jurisprudential order of coexistence would the first liberalrights appear.

Our second theme – that of the historical independence and persis-tence of civil philosophy – is one to whose exploration we have contrib-uted in this book. We have done so by arguing that there was nodialectical supersession of metaphysical rationalism and civil voluntar-ism – Leibniz and Pufendorf, Wolff and Thomasius – except in theminds of Kantian philosophers and historians. They of course under-take the dialectical exercises precisely in order to achieve this superses-sion ‘in thought’. The fact that Pufendorfian–Thomasian natural lawand political jurisprudence survived its recurrent metaphysical critiques– continuing to form jurists and politici for the Brandenburg-Prussianstate throughout the eighteenth century – is a longstanding theme of his-torical research (Rüping ; Rüping ; Wiebking ). We havealso taken note of Stephen Lestition’s more recent exploration of asimilar theme, in his timely account of the continuing role of civil phi-losophy in the formation of a ‘juristic civic consciousness’ in the lawfaculty of Kant’s own university during the mid-eighteenth century(Lestition ). To the extent that we have contributed to this theme, itis by clarifying the radical autonomy of civil philosophy – as an institutedintellectual paideia – from all projects for its philosophical (metaphysical)‘critique’. Grounded in its own ‘Epicurean’ anthropology, and self-con-sciously opposed to the ‘Platonic’ recovery of transcendental grounds forknowledge and morality – a recovery which it regarded as the danger-ous illusion of a rival intellectualist anthropology – Pufendorfian andThomasian civil philosophy was immune to all attempts to reveal itstranscendental grounds.

To the extent, then, that statist natural law and positive political juris-prudence did undergo philosophical critique and transformation, thiswas not the outcome of any weakness in its intellectual foundations.Rather, it resulted from the erosion of the institutional boundarybetween political jurisprudence and ‘critical’ philosophy, brought aboutby the spread of Kantianism as an academic enclave-culture. This is thelesson to be learned from accounts of the manner in which a group ofKantian legal philosophers – Hufeland, Feuerbach, Thibaut – domi-nated the Jena law faculty during the s (Lingelbach ). For in theircore doctrines – their insistence on the centrality of the moral law tojurisprudence, their refusal to derive justice from existing law, their insis-tence on the sanctity of the person as an end in itself, their relegation of

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political–legal utility in favour of Kantian moral autonomy – we identifynot the philosophical critique of positive jurisprudence, but somethingquite different: the institutional subordination of jurisprudence to theprestigious culture of Kantian philosophical critique. This subordina-tion, we recall, is precisely what Kant’s Rechtslehre is designed to inflict,reserving insight into the pure ‘principle of justice’ for intellectuals pre-pared to purify themselves of all positive jurisprudence. The Kantian cri-tique of positive jurisprudence thus represents the anti-juridical revengeof a metaphysics dedicated to reversing the law’s desacralisation of civilgovernance. Moreover this is how several anti-Kantian ‘popular philoso-phers’ saw the matter, as is clear in Friedrich Nicolai’s attack on theRechtslehre for substituting moral philosophy for jurisprudence (Nicolai).

The continuing importance of Pufendorfian natural law and positiveStaatsrecht in other environs – ‘devoted not to the university but to gov-ernment’ – indicates their grounding in an autonomous institu-tional–intellectual culture. In the early s, at the very moment whenthe Jena Kantians were insisting that the state conform itself to the innermoral autonomy of its citizens – and when Kant himself was publishinghis account of a future ethical state bearing the form of the ‘true visiblechurch’ – the privy councillor Carl Gottlieb Svarez was instructing thePrussian crown princes in a very different conception of the state’s rela-tion to the religious and moral cultures of its citizens: ‘Insofar as weregard the Regent simply as the head [Oberhaupt] of civil society, all hisrights over religious associations flow solely from the rights of generalsupervision, through which he must ensure that no associations are tol-erated in the state that are contrary to the ends of the state and endan-ger public peace and security.’ On this basis, Svarez builds the state’srights of religious supervision: the right of the state to examine religioussystems with a view to determining their impact on public tranquillityand security; to ensure that religious teachers are also well disposed tothe state; to ensure that religious associations attempt to exercise no cor-porate rights apart from those enunciated by state law; and to preventthe controversies of opposed religious parties from breaking out into dis-turbances of civil order. If Svarez’s construction of the state’s supervi-sory right is thus immediately reminiscent of Thomasius’ defence of thereligious rights of Protestant princes, then so too is the manner in whichthe statesman limits this right: ‘The state can never and under nocircumstances be justified in prescribing what a religious associationshould teach or how it should order its form of worship.’ Further, ‘The

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state can never prohibit the practice of a religion merely on the groundsof its dogmatic principles . . . Purely dogmatic concepts and opinions ofGod and divine things, of the relation of man to the Godhead, of hiscondition after death, no matter how false and incorrect, can never havea harmful influence on civil life and the duties that a man owes to hisneighbour or the state’ (Svarez , –). In other words, a centuryafter Pufendorf ’s death, and regardless of its metaphysical critique, civilphilosophy continued its task of forming the deportment of thosecharged with governing the desacralised state.

The third theme we have identified as worthy of further explorationis that of the quasi-religious character of enlightenment rationalism. Wehave seen that German civil and metaphysical philosophy were bothdeeply rooted in Protestant religious culture, which each nonethelesssought to reconfigure for its own ends. In referring to the quasi-religiouscharacter of early modern rationalism, we are thus indicating the re-configuration characteristic of rationalist metaphysics. This recon-figuration imbues ‘rational’ metaphysics with a religious function bytreating reason as that part of human being linking it to its divine intel-lectual archetype; for, in doing so, it deploys philosophy as an exercise inself-purifying, self-transcending moral regeneration.

At the heart of the religious function of metaphysical rationalism liesthe metaphysical anthropology of homo duplex – the figuration of man asa pure intelligence temporarily embodied in a sensible being. Thisanthropology is responsible for the inward intellectualist character ofthe whole line of metaphysical philosophies, from Leibniz through Wolffto Kant and beyond. In requiring its initiates to view themselves as ‘sen-sibly affected rational beings’, the anthropology induces the pathos ofmetaphysical longing, driving them to renounce their civil surroundingsand begin the endless task of intellectual self-purification. Yet this quasi-religious function of metaphysics is simultaneously the source of itsrational ‘scientific’ claims; for it is through self-purifying abstraction thatcertain individuals gain access to the pure a priori concepts of whichempirical things are the supposed manifestation. Both functions ofmetaphysical rationalism – the religious and the scientific – are capturedin Leibniz’s conception of transcendent concepts as ‘perfections’ whoseknowledge perfects the beholder. This is a knowledge promising accessto the divine intellection of the pure concepts – of things, of morality,of justice, of regeneration – prior to their impure embodiment in theempirical prudential world (PW, ; Gr, , –). This privileged par-ticipation in a quasi-divine pure thinking holds the key to the moral and

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epistemological authority of the metaphysician, which is in turn thesource of this personage’s claims to exert influence in a variety of intel-lectual and social domains, including those of law, politics, and religion.

Modern Kantians generally argue that Kant achieved the rationalemancipation of philosophy by effecting the final transition from aquasi-religious metaphysics to a fully formal transcendental philosophy.In the case of Kant’s moral philosophy, this transition is supposed toentail the relegation of all substantive metaphysical anthropology andcosmology in favour of a formal concept of morality derivable fromordinary consciousness. Nonetheless, in our reconstruction of Kant’sGroundwork (.), we have shown that the process of deriving the formalconcept from ‘ordinary consciousness’ is itself a spiritual exercise, onedeeply informed by the self-formative use of the anthropology of ‘sen-sibly affected rational being’ and the cosmology of the spiritual commu-nity. Even at its most formal – indeed, especially here – Kant’s practicalphilosophy retains its metaphysical anthropology and quasi-religiousethos. For it is through their self-formative use of this anthropology –through their renunciation of prudential ethics and purgation of all sen-sible inclinations and ends – that Kantian philosophers presume toaccede to a universally binding (‘holy’) rational moral law; presume, thatis, self-transcending access to a universe of rational beings whose commu-nio is the moral law. Moreover, through this turning inwards – away fromexternally imposed civil duties and towards an absolute inner ‘human-ity’ bearing all the features of the metaphysical God – Kantian ethicalrationalism inherits the religious purism of its neoscholastic andLeibnizian predecessors. The faint chill of zealotry thus surroundsKant’s treatment of suicide as sensible man’s sacrilegious assault on hisown ‘humanity’, which ‘is conceived as an intelligible substance . . . as asubject that is destined to give moral laws to man, and to determine him:as occupant of the body, to whose jurisdiction the control of all man’spowers is subordinated’ (.; LE, ).

Rather than accepting the modern account of Kant’s supposed for-malisation of a quasi-religious metaphysics, we should in fact begin tolook for the quasi-religious aspects of modern Kantian formalism. Werewe to consider John Rawls’s theory of justice in this light, for example,then we might well adopt a different view of the supposedly formal char-acter of his central methodological strategies – in particular the ‘veil ofignorance’ required to enter the so-called ‘original position’ needed forthe choice of principles of justice (Rawls , –). In requiring thephilosopher to abstract from all forms of knowledge relevant to extant

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civil ends and personally interested desires – in stipulating the philoso-pher’s ignorance of his or her social position, natural abilities, moralbeliefs, historical and cultural location – might not the veil of ignorancesimulate Kant’s spiritual exercise in self-purification and ascent to thespiritual community? After all, what is a community of mutually dis-interested beings – beings whose rational calculations of interest cometo form a reciprocating totality through abstraction from their personaland social ‘embodiment’ – if not a simulacrum of Kant’s communityof intellectual beings? In other words, to the degree that knowledge ofRawls’s pure principles of justice requires the intellectual purification ofthose charged with knowing them, we have prima facie reasons for inves-tigating whether modern Kantian formalism might not conceal thesame quasi-religious metaphysics as its prototype. Further, might not theintellectual and moral prestige of the modern formal philosopher owesomething to the religious deportment of the metaphysical personage?For how else does this philosopher accede to formal principles of justiceexcept via the cultivation of a self-purifying transcendence of all instru-mental social ends and positive laws? These at least are questions forfurther research.

Finally, our last theme draws attention to what might be called theneo-confessional character of rationalist political metaphysics. By ‘neo-confessional’ we mean the preparedness to declare metaphysical philos-ophy necessary for living a good life and, sometimes, the willingness tomake assent to this philosophy compulsory, as the condition of forminga good society. The neo-confessional character of early modern politi-cal metaphysics is grounded in its intellectualist ethics. In modellingethical conduct in terms of the self-legislating self-governance of anintellectual being – rather than, for example, in terms of the capacity torestrain external behaviour in accordance with public decorum or pos-itive law – there is a tendency to treat the doctrine held to be responsiblefor intellectual self-governance as necessary for the good life. For as longas the metaphysics of morals is understood as a formal theorisation of amoral law in principle available to the ‘ordinary consciousness’, then theproblem of a metaphysical confessionalism remains invisible. As soon,however, as we uncover the self-formative role of the metaphysicalpaideia – the moment we see that metaphysics programmes the exercisesin abstraction and self-purification required to deport oneself as a self-governing intelligence – then its neo-confessional character becomesstarkly apparent. For, if it is only intellectually self-governed conduct thatis going to count as moral – and if metaphysics contains the doctrine and

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discipline required to become a self-governing intellectual being – thenmetaphysics itself must be necessary for living a good life. It is only ashort step from here to making metaphysical ethics compulsory and todeclaring other forms of ethics not just erroneous but morally corrupt-ing, hence deserving of prohibition or even of punishment.

We first encountered this chain of consequences in Leibniz’s remarkson the issue of whether heresy is a crime (..), written, it will berecalled, as a criticism of Thomasius’ negative answer to this question.The twin grounds of Thomasius’ answer – his voluntarist denial thatideas can affect the will, and his statist insistence that only external civilactions be punishable – encapsulate the religious and political disposi-tion of civil philosophy. Conversely, it is Leibniz’s rationalist insistencethat the goodness of the will is determined by the purity of the mind’sideas – his fundamental teaching that humans are perfected throughcontemplation of the intellectual perfections – that leads him to regardheresy as culpable and punishable. For, in establishing a continuitybetween intellectual purity and civil conduct – without which, saysLeibniz, we would be forced to the absurd Pufendorfian conclusion thatgood acts may come from bad dispositions – the way is open to exercisecivil force to achieve the required intellectual purity. In Wolff’s discussionof the relation between the sage and the prince, we encountered an evenmore pronounced tendency to give civil force to metaphysical doctrine.Wolff treats metaphysics as both the key to knowledge of the true end ofthe state – the perfection of man’s intellectual nature – and as the meansof acquiring the pure disinterested disposition required to direct govern-ment to this end. In other words he collapses the distinction between thesage and the prince – metaphysics and politics – and, on the basis of thecontinuum between the pursuit of moral perfection and the exercise ofcivil power, envisages his own natural theology forming the basis of astate religion (Link , ).

As we have seen (..), Kant also regards metaphysics as necessaryfor leading the good life, treating prudential–empirical ethics not just aserroneous but as morally corrupting, and metaphysics as both true andmorally purifying: ‘We know well that without possessing such a meta-physics it is . . . impossible . . . to ground morals on their genuine prin-ciples and thereby to create pure moral dispositions, grafting them ontohuman souls [Gemüthern] for the highest good of the world’ (.–;PP, –). Like its Leibnizian and Wolffian precursors, Kantian meta-physics may thus also be regarded as neo-confessional. Despite hisattempt to open a gap between ethical cultivation and juridical coercion,

Postscript

in treating the latter as a devolved version of the former Kant leaves theway open for juridical laws to be ‘elevated and absorbed’ into moralones. Once this pathway has been opened, then it is possible to envisagea state governed by ethical laws.

In Kant’s account of this ‘ethical state’ or ‘kingdom of God on earth’– whose blueprint is sketched in the Religion, the essays on world peaceand cosmopolitan citizenship, and the Conflict of the Faculties – we see thefull and final neo-confessional character of his metaphysics. For, unlikePufendorf and Thomasius, who treat all moral societies or churches asvoluntary associations permanently encased in a morally indifferentpolitical state, Kant envisages the emergence of an ‘ethico-civil society’that is co-extensive with the political state and destined eventually to dis-place it from within. There must be, Kant argues, a publicly proclaimedreligious doctrine in order to form individuals into an ethico-civil society,even if such a public historical doctrine threatens to straitjacket the innerfreedom of the moral law and corrupt the purity of ‘rational faith’. Infact, it is in overcoming this threat – via the progressive hermeneutic rev-elation of the rational faith contained in historical religion – that Kant’smetaphysics inherits its full confessional role, constituting itself as therational theology of a ‘true visible church’ or emergent ethical state.

Kant’s political metaphysics thus resiles from the ideological neutral-ity of the desacralised state not by directly giving this state moral ends,but by envisaging its progressive withering in favour of the moral statehidden within, giving rise to ‘a union of human beings merely under thelaws of virtue . . . an ethical commonwealth [gemein Wesen]’ (.; RRT,). In proposing a state run on laws of virtue Kant is of course adopt-ing a position antithetical to Pufendorf ’s fundamental separation of thekingdom of truth and the civil kingdom, which entails that: ‘there neednot be established a particular state in order to propagate and preservetruth, no more than it is necessary to set up a separate commonwealthwhere philosophy and the other sciences are to be taught’ (DHR, ). ForPufendorf and Thomasius there can be no ethical state, because the con-dition of bringing tranquillity to religiously divided communities was theradical moral indifference of the state and the equally radical privatisa-tion of religion. Hence, despite his insistence that the members of theethical state are united by non-coercive moral laws, Kant’s politicalmetaphysics compromises both the religious neutrality of the state andthe political neutralisation of religion.

It is here that the neo-confessional character of Kantian metaphysicsis most fully evident and its difference from civil philosophy most fully

The kingdom of truth and the civil kingdom

apparent. This difference – approaching incommensurateness – is givensymptomatic expression in the different uses that the two cultures makeof the distinction between private and public. For Pufendorf andThomasius it is religion and morality that define the private domain, theirinward and unenforceable character defining the kingdom of truthinhabited by the teacher and auditor; just as use of coercion to preservesocial peace defines the civil kingdom inhabited by sovereign and subject– there being no interstitial world or persona. In Kant’s Conflict of theFaculties, however, it is the individual’s official duties that define theprivate domain, while the public domain is constituted by scholars in freeintellectual exchange. Moreover, it is envisaged that one day the freeexchange of ideas will itself make the official exercise of power redun-dant, as the persona of the scholar displaces that of sovereign and subject.

This inversion of the usual conception of private and public hasunderstandably struck many commentators as anomalous. It makesperfect sense, however, as soon as the community of scholars or repub-lic of letters is seen as an avatar of Kant’s spiritual community and as ananalogue of his ethical state. Under these circumstances, the official useof reason, for the purposes of church and state, indeed appears limitedand restricted – ‘private’ in comparison with the spontaneous and trans-parent ‘public’ communications of the community of pure intelligences.It is, therefore, in envisaging the moral renovation of political govern-ance through the figure of the rational community – the figure knowntoday as ‘rational communication in the public sphere’ – that Kantianmetaphysics assumes its full neo-confessional form. For here, an anti-political enclave politics, grounded in the metaphysics of rational com-munity, envisages its own expansion into the ‘true visible church’.

In this setting, under such intense pressure to make the state ethicaland accountable, the hard-won separation of the pursuit of moralregeneration and the exercise of civil authority threatens to collapse, atleast ‘in thought’. Here too the gap between civil and metaphysical cul-tures is at its widest. For, while the former treats this separation as thecondition of governing a liberal society, the latter regards it as somethingto be overcome, in order to facilitate the self-governance and self-per-fection of a democratic moral community. At this boundary, where, fromone side, the division of the kingdom of truth and the civil kingdomappears as the fundamental condition of a pluralistic liberal society and,from the other, as the unleashing of an instrumental repressive state, therival intellectual cultures remain as far apart as they did in the eighteenthcentury.

Postscript

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absolutism, , ; and the desacralisation ofpolitics, –; and liberalism, , ,–, –, –, –; in Pufendorf,, –

adiaphora (indifferents), , , –, Ahnert, Thomas, , , Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus), –, ,

, –Alberti, Valentin, –, , , , ff,

–, –, , Albrecht, Michael, ; Eklektik, , –Allison, Henry, ; Lessing and the

Enlightenment, Alsted, Johann, , Althusius, Johannes, , –, , , ,

; Politica, anamnesis, , Arnauld, Antoine, Arnisaeus, Henning, , , ff, Arnold, Gottfried, Unparteiysche Kirchen- und

Ketzerhistorie, Augsburg, Peace of, , ,

Barbeyrac, Jean, , , , Barreau, Hervé, –Baumgarten, A. G., Metaphysica, ; Initia

Philosophiae Primae, Bayle, Pierre, Beck, Lewis White, , , , ; Early

German Philosophy, Bernard, Jacques, Nouvelles de la Republique des

Lettres, –Bodin, Jean, ff, Bohatec, Josef, –Brückner, Jutta, Staatswissenschaften,

Kameralismus und Naturrecht, –Budde(us), Johann Francis, –Buhle, J. G.,

Caritas ordinata (doctrine of ‘well-ordered love’),–,

Carmichael, Gershom, Carpzov, Johann Benedict, , –civil philosophy, ix, –, –; and civic

republicanism, –; anddeconfessionalisation, , , ff,–, –; and electicism, –;histories of, ix, –, –; andjurisprudence, –, , –, –; andnatural law, , –; and politics, ,, –; marginalisation of, , ,–, , ; rivalry withmetaphysics, x, –, , , –, ,–, , –, , , , –,–; as self-culture (paideia), , ,–, –; Thomasius and, –,–, –

church, –; and state, , –, –; asmodel for society, –, , , , ,–, –

confessionalisation, , ; and theconfessional state –, –, ; andreligious civil war, , ,

Conring, Hermann, ff, communitarianism, , , , , ;

and confessionalism, –, ;theological origins of, – (see also,public sphere)

Cramer, Daniel,

deconfessionalisation, xi, , –, –,–, , –; and the desacralisationof politics, –, , ff, –, –,–, , , , , , –,–, ; and the resacralisation ofpolitics, xi, , –, –, –, ,, –, –, , , –,–,

Denzer, Horst, , –, –, Döring, Detlef, , , , Dreitzel, Horst, , , , , –, Duns Scotus, Johannes,

Index

ecclesiology: Lutheran, –; Thomasius’, –eclecticism, ; and civil philosophy, –; and

scholasticism, –; Thomasius and, ,, –; history of, –

Enlightenment (Aufklärung), , , ; civil, –,, ; debate over, , , ; Kant and,, ; metaphysical (philosophical),–, –, , , , ; multipleforms of, , –, , –, , -;periodisation, –, –, –; andtheology, –, , –

Eschweiler, Karl,

Fischer, Kuno, Foucault, Michel, Friedeburg, Robert von,

Gerhard, Ephraim, –Gerhard, Johann, Geßner, Salomon, gnoseomonism, Goclenius, Rudolf, Gregor, Mary J., –Grotius, Hugo, , –, –; De Jure Belli ac

Pacis, , Grunert, Frank,

Haakonssen, Knud, , Habermas, Jürgen, Hadot, Pierre, , , Heckel, Martin, –, , –, Hegel, G. W. F., , Heimsoeth, Heinz, , –, –, Henrich, Dieter, , heresy, , , ; and the desacralisation of

politics, , –, ; Leibniz on,–, , ; Thomasius on, , –,–, ,

Hinrichs, Carl, Hinske, Norbert, –, –, , –history, –; Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual

history), –, , ; Kantian (dialectical),ix-x, –, –, , –, –,, ; and metaphysics, –, –,–, –,

Hobbes, Thomas, ; and Pufendorf, , ,–, –

Hochstrasser, T. J., , , , –Hofmann, Daniel, ; and the ‘two truths’

doctrine, ; De Usu et Applicatione NotionumLogicorum ad Res Theologicus,

Horn, J. F., –; De Civitate, –Hotman, Francis, Huguenots, , humanism, –

intellectuals, , –, ; critical, –,, , , , , –; juristic,, , , , ; metaphysical, ,‒, –, , –, , –

Jacobi, F. H., –, Jasinowski, Bogumil, –Jesuits (Society of Jesus), ; and metaphysics,

–justice, ; Kant on, –; Leibniz on, ,

; Pufendorf on, –

Kant, Immanuel, ix, , ff; anti-consequentialism, , –, ; ‘ascetic’(self-transformative) character of hisphilosophy, , ff, –, –,–, –, –; autonomy in, –,–; on the Bible, –; categoricalimperative, , –, –; hisChristology, , –; on the church(philosophical ecclesiology), , –,; and civil philosophy, –, ,–, , , –; Conflict of theFaculties, –; on crime andpunishment, ; and the criticalintellectual, –, –, , ,–; Critique of Pure Reason, , ;Critique of Practical Reason, , ; Dreamsof a Spirit Seer Elucidated by Dreams ofMetaphysics, –, ; on duty(obligation), –, , –; GeneralNatural History and Theory of the Heavens,–, ; on the general will, , ,–; on the good will, –;Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, ,–, , , ; hermeneutics,–; on humanity (and personhood),, –, –; kingdom of ends, ,–, ; and Leibniz, , –;–, ; on lying, –; asmetaphysician, –, , , –;metaphysics of law, –; metaphysicsof morality, –, , –, –;Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre,–; moral anthropology, , ,–, –, –, –, –,–, , ; on moral feeling, ,, ; morality and law, , –;morality and religion, –, –; onnatural religion, –; on naturalrights, , –, ; and Neology,–, –, ; noumena (andphenomena), , –, ; onnoumenal possession, –;philosophical theology, –; on

Index

Kant, Immanuel (cont.)political legitimacy, –; on theprinciple of right/justice, –; andprudential ethics, , , –, –;his purism, , –, , , ; onradical evil, , –; Religion within theBoundaries of Reason Alone, , –;‘Remarks on Observations on the Feeling of theBeautiful and the Sublime’, , –; andthe resacralisation of politics, , –,, –, –, –; hissectarianism, ; on sovereignty, –;spiritual community, –, –,–, –, –; spiritual exercisesin, ff, ff; on the state, –; onsuicide, , ; and Swedenborg,–, ; and university metaphysics,–, –, , , –; andWolff, –, ; and the Wöllner edict,–, –,

Keckermann, Bartholomaeus, , , Kelley, Donald J., Kennet, Basil, Kersting, Wolfgang, –, –, Kimmich, Dorothee, Klippel, Diethelm, Knutzen, Martin, , Kobusch, Theo, Koselleck, Reinhart, –Kriegel, Blandine, –, ,

Lange, Joachim, –law: church (Kirchenrecht), –, , –;

Imperial, ; and juridification, –, ;and morality, , , –, , –;and politics, , –; Roman, , , ,–, ; teaching of, , , –(see also, political jurisprudence, juspublicum, Staatsrecht)

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, xi, ff;abstraction in, –, –; attack onPufendorf, –, –, , ;‘Catholic Demonstrations’, ; andChristian philosophy, , , –,–, , ; and Christian naturallaw, , , –; and Christian unity,–, , –; Confessio Philosophi, ,ff; Discourse on Metaphysics, , , ,; on the Eucharist, –; on evil, ,–, –; on heresy, , –; andHobbes, ; on justice, , , –;and Kant, , –; ‘Meditation on theCommon Concept of Justice’, –;Monadology, –, , , , ;moral anthropology, xii, , , ,

–; natural law, –, –; Opinionon the Principles of Pufendorf, –, –;philosophical theology, , –, ;principles of reason, –; and theresacralisation of politics, xi-xii, –,, , , –, –; Roman law in,–; the sage (and the prince), –,–, , –; and scholasticmetaphysics, , –, ; spiritualexercises in, , , , ; and thespiritualisation of law, –; and Steno,–; on the state, –, –; SystemaTheologicum, , ; Theodicy, ,

Lestition, Steven, , , , Lewalter, Ernst, –liberalism, , –; and absolutism, , ,

, –, –, –; Pufendorf ’s,, , –; Thomasius’, –;

Link, Christoph, Lohr, Charles, –, Lombard, Peter, , Luther, Martin, Disputation Against Scholastic

Theology, –

Manent, Pierre, Martini, Cornelius, , Martini, Jacob, , Meisner, Balthasar, , ff, Melanchthon, Philip, –Merlan, Philip, metaphysics, ; abstraction in, , –;

Albert the Great’s, –, , –;anthropology of (homo duplex), , , ,–, , –, –, , ; andanti-consequentialism, –, –, ;Aristotle’s, ; Calvinist, –, ; andChristology, , –; andconfessionalism, , –, –, ,–, , –, , , , –;and the contemplative life, –, –;enlightenment, –, , –, ,; of the Eucharist, –; of evil,–, –, –; of God, , ,–, ; history of, , –; ‘Jesuit’,–; Kant’s, –, ff; Leibniz’s,–, –, –; Lutheran, –,, –, ; Luther’s attack on, –,–; of morality, –; and ontology,, , ; Protestant, , –, –,–; and the prudential life, –;rationalist, –, –, –, ,–; rivalry with civil philosophy, ,–, –, –, , , –, ;sacral character of, –, , –, –,–, , –, , , –;

Index

scholastic, , , ; Scotist, , –,; as self-culture (paideia), , , –,–, , –, –, , , –,, –, –, –; as spiritualdiscipline, , , –, ; and thesubjectivity of space and time, –; andtheology, –, –, –, , ;Thomasius’ attack on, , –, –,–; Thomist, ; university(Schulmetaphysik), –, –, –, ,, , –, –; Wolff’s, –

Mevius, David, , ffmoral philosophy, –, –; Aristotelian,

, , –; civil reconstruction of, ,, –, , –, , –, –;history of, –, –, –; Kantian,; metaphysical, –; and politicaljurisprudence, –, , –, –

Müller, Philipp, ,

natural law, –; Christian (metaphysical), ,–, , –, –, –; civil, , ,–, –, , ; as civil philosophy,–, ; and the desacralisation ofpolitics, –, , , –, , , –,–, ; Leibniz’s, –, –; andmoral philosophy, , , –, –;and politics, –; and positive law(Staatsrecht), , , , –, ;Pufendorf ’s, , –, , , –,; rationalist, ; and sovereignty, ,, , , , ; Thomasius’, ,–; transformation of, , , –,, –; voluntarist,

Neology, –, –, –, Nicolai, Friedrich, Nicolas of Cusa, Nizoli(us), Mario, –

obligation (duty), –, –, –Oestreich, Gerhard, , Othmer, Sieglinde, –

pancosmism, pantheism, person (and personae), , ; Christian

conception of, , , , –; andChristology, , –, –; and imagoDei, , , , , , , ; Kanton, , , –, –; Leibniz on,–, ; and moral anthropology, ;Pufendorf on, xi, , –; Thomasiuson, – (see also, subject)

Petersen, Peter, , philosophical ascesis (‘ascetic’ philosophy), ;

civil philosophy as, , , , , ,–; as deportment formation (paideia),, –, , –, , , , –,, , , –, ff, , –,–; and epistemology, –; and thehistory of philosophy, x-xi, –; Kant’sGroundwork as, –; metaphysics as, ,, , , –, , –, , –;role of moral anthropology in, x, –,–, , –; and self-transformation,, , ; and spiritual exercises, , ,, –,

philosophical theology (natural theology), ,–, , ; civil attack on, –, ;Kant’s, –; Leibniz’s, , –,; Wolff’s,

philosophy, ; Christian, –, –, ,, –, , –, ; history of,; rival conceptions of, ; and theology,‒, ‒, ‒, ‒, ‒, ‒,‒, ‒, ‒; Thomasius’ reformof, ‒, ‒; in the university, (seealso, philosophical ascesis)

Pietism, at Halle, , ff; and Kant, ,; and Thomasius, –; and Wolff,–

Placcius, David Vincenz, , , Pocock, J. G. A., –political jurisprudence (public law) (jus

publicum, Staatsrecht), , , ; Kant and,–, ; Imperial, , ; andjuridification (secularisation) xi, –,–, ; and natural law, , , ,; and religious conflict, –, ,–, –; Thomasius on, , –,, , , –

politics, –; desacralisation of, –, , ff,–, –, –, , , , , ,–, , ; and law, –; andmorality, –, –; resacralisation of,xi, , –, –, –, , , –,–, , , –, –, ,

Prasch, Johann Ludwig, , , ff, public sphere (Öffentlichkeit), –, , ,

(see also, communitarianism)Pufendorf, Samuel, ix, –, , –, ff;

and absolutism, , –; church law(Staatskirchenrecht), , ff; citizen (andsovereign), –, , –; De HabituReligionis Christianae ad Vitam Civilem, ,, –, , ; De Jure Naturae etGentium, , , , , ; De OfficioHominis et Civis, –, , , ; andthe desacralisation of politics, xii, –,, –, –, , –, –; De

Index

Pufendorf, Samuel (cont.)Statu Hominum Naturali, ; government,–, –; and Grotius, –; andHobbes, , , –, –; Jus FecialeDivinum, ; and liberalism, , ,–; on metaphysics, , , –,, –; and modern moralphilosophy, , , –, –,–, ; moral anthropology, xii,–, –, –, ; on moral entities,, , , –; natural law, , ,, , –, –; on naturalrights, –, –; obligation (duties),, –, ; on ‘offices’, –; onperson and personae, xi, , –,–, –; political legitimacy, –;political pact, , –, , ,–; and the privatisation of religion,, , , ; and reason of state, ;on security, , , –, , –,, ; sociability, –, , ‒,‒; on sovereignty, , , ,–, –; and Spinoza, ; state ofnature, –; voluntarism in, –,; on resistance, –; on toleration,, –; on utility,

Rachel, Samuel, , , , ; De JureNaturae et Gentium Dissertationes, –

rationalism, , , ; and the history ofphilosophy, –; Kant’s, –;Leibniz’s, , –; metaphysical, , ;Wolff’s, –; religious character of,–; theological grounds of, –, –,–, –, (see also, voluntarism)

Rawls, John, –reason of state (Staatsräson), , Reformation (see confessionalisation)religion: credal, , ; natural, , , ,

–; and politics, –, ;privatisation of, , –, , –;wars of, xi, , , , , ,

rights, ; against the state, , –, ; Kanton, , –, ; natural, , , ,–, ; as state creations, , ,, –

Riley, Patrick, –, , , , , Röd, Wolfgang, Rousseau, Jean Jacques, ,

Sahme, Reinhold, –, –Salmonowicz, Stanislaw, Scheibler, Christoph, , ; Opus

Metaphysicum, –Schilling, Heinz,

Schlaich, Klaus, –Schmidt, James, –Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm, –, –,

–, –Schmitt, Carl, –, Schmucker, Joseph, , Schneewind, J. B., , , –; The

Invention of Autonomy, Schneider, Hans-Peter, ffSchneiders, Werner, –, –, , ;

Naturrecht und Liebesethik, –scholasticism, ; ; Luther’s attack on,

–; and metaphysics, – Protestant,, , –, ; second-wave, , ;Thomasius’ attack on, –, , –;Wolffian, –

Schröder, Peter, Schultz, F. A., , secularisation, , ; of the church, –,

different forms of, –, –; asjuridification, –, –, ; of politics,–,

Sève, René, Siep, Ludwig, –Skinner, Quentin, society, , , ; as church, –, –, ,

, , –, –;deconfessionalisation of, –, , ,–; and the state, , –, –,–

sovereignty, ; Althusius on, –; divine,–; Kant on, –; popular, –,, ; Pufendorf on, –, –;territorial, , ,

Sparn, Walter, , –, –, , ;Wiederkehr der Metaphysik, ff

state, –; and church, , –, ; civilconception of, –, –, –;confessional, , –, –; ethical, ,, –, ; legitimacy of, –, ,–, –; metaphysical conceptionof, –, –, –, –, –;religious neutrality of, , , , –,, –; and society, , –, –,–; and sovereignty, , , –, ,, –, –

state of innocence (status integritatis), , –,–

state of nature, –Staüdlin, Carl Friedrich, , Steno, Nicolaus, , ffStolleis, Michael, Strimesius, Samuel, , Stuke, Horst, –Sturm, Johann,

Index

Suárez, Francisco, , , –, , , , subject, the, , , –, –, Svarez, Carl Gottlieb, –

Tennemann, W. G., theology, Calvinist, ff, , ; Catholic,

ff, , –; Christological, , –,–; and confessionalism, ;Eucharistic, –; Lutheran, ff, –,–, –; and philosophy, –,–, –, –, –, –, –,–; spiritualistic, –, –, –,– (see also, philosophical theology)

Thirty Years War, xi, , , , , Thomasius, Christian, ix, –, , ff; anti-

clericalism, –, –; anti-scholasticism, , –, , , –,–; attack on metaphysics, –, –,, –, , –, , –, –;Ausübung der Sittenlehre, , , ‒,; church law (Staatskirchenrecht), , ,, –; church and state, –, –;Das Recht evangelischer Fürsten in theologischenStreitigkeiten, , –; anddeconfessionalisation, –, , ,–, –; decorum, , –,–; and Descartes, –, –; andthe desacralisation of politics, , ,, , –, –; and thedetranscendentalising of ethics, –;–; doctrine of ‘offices’, , ,–; doctrine of the passions(Affektenlehre), , , –, , ,–, –; and electicism, , , ;Einleitung zur Sittenlehre, , –;Einleitung zur Vernünft-Lehre, ; ethicaltherapeutics, , , –; ‘Foreword’(to Grotius’ De Jure Belli ac Pacis), –,–, , , –; Fundamenta JurisNaturae et Gentium, , , –;Fürstlichen Personen Heirat, ; and Grotius,, ; on heresy, , –, –, ;his history of philosophy, –; onHobbes, ; on the indifferents(adiaphora), , –, ; InstitutionesJurisprudentiae Divinae, –, , ,–; Introductio ad Philosophiam Aulicam,, , –; Kleine Teutsche Scriften, ;on law (and morality), –, –; andLocke, ; on lying, –; on marriagelaw, –, –; and modern moralphilosophy, –, –, –, –,–; moral anthropology, –, , ,–, –, –, ; natural law,–, , –; on natural rights, –;

and the Pietists, –; on philosophicalsectarianism, , –; PreliminaryDissertation (to the Institutiones JurisprudentiaeDivinae), –, –; on priestcraft, –,–, ; and Pufendorf, –, –,–, , –, –, –; onthe sage (and the fools), –; spiritualisttheology, –, –, –;Summarischer Entwurf der Grundlehren, ; ontoleration, , –; VollständigeErläuterung der Kirchenrechts-Gelahrtheit, ff;voluntarism in, , , , –; VomRecht evangelischer Fürsten in Mitteldingen oderKirchenzeremonien, , –; Von denMängeln der aristotelischen Ethik, –; Wieein junger Mensch zu informieren sei, –;and Wolff,

Thomasius, Jacob, Thomassen, Beroald, –, , , Timpler, Clemens, , toleration, , , –Tooke, Andrew, Tuck, Richard, , ; Philosophy and Government

–, , –Tully, James, , , ,

universities, xi-xii, ; and confessionalisation,, ; Frankfurt an der Oder, ;Gießen, ; Göttingen, ; Halle, ,, , ff; Helmstedt (Academia Julia),; Jena, , –; Königsberg, ,–, ; Leipzig, , –, ; andstate-building, , , ; Wittenburg,

Veltheim, Valentin, , , , Velthuysen, Lambert, –Versor, Johann: Epitome Metaphysicae Aristotelicae,

Vitoria, Franciso de, , voluntarism, –, , , ; civil, ,,

–, , , –; as ethos, ,; theological, –, –, ,–, – (see also, rationalism)

Weigel, Erhard, Westphalia, Treaty of, , , , , , ,

, Wolff, Christian, –, ff; civil religion,

–, ; ethics, –; and Leibniz,–; metaphysics, –; naturaltheology, , ; and Neology, –,–; and the Pietists, –; politics,–; on the sage (and the prince),–, ; and the return ofscholasticism, –; and

Index

Wolff, Christian (cont.)Thomasius, , ; Vernünftige Gedankenvon dem gesellschaftlichen Leben der Menschenund insonderheit dem gemeinen Wesen, ;Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und derSeele des Menschen, auch allen Dingenüberhaupt, ; Vernünftige Gedanken von dermenschen Tun und Lassen zu Beförderung ihrer

Glückseeligkeit, ; Von den Regenten, die sichWeltweisheit befleißigen, und von denWeltweisen, die das Regiment führen, –

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, , , Wöllner, Johann Christoph, , –Wundt, Max, , ,

Zurbuchen, Simone, ,

Index

Edited by Q S (General Editor)L D , D R ,

and J T

, . . , and (eds.)Philosophy in HistoryEssays in the historiography of philosophypb:

. . . Virtue, Commerce and HistoryEssays on political thought and history, chiefly in the eighteenth centurypb:

. . Private Vices, Public BenefitsBernard Mandeville’s social and political thoughthb:

(ed.)The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europepb:

The Judgment of SenseRenaissance nationalism and the rise of aestheticspb:

Hegel: Religion, Economics and the Politics of Spirit, –pb:

Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Orderhb:

Gassendi the AtomistAdvocate of history in an age of sciencehb:

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Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociologypb:

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That Noble DreamThe ‘objectivity question’ and the American historical professionpb:

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Faces of DegenerationA European disorder, c. –c. pb: x

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, , and (eds.)Machiavelli and Republicanismpb:

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The Rise of Neo-KantianismGerman Academic Philosophy between Idealism and Positivismhb:

Interpretation and Meaning in the RenaissanceThe Case of Lawhb:

From Politics to Reason of StateThe Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics –hb:

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An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contextspb:

Philosophy and Government –pb:

. Defining ScienceWilliam Whewell, Natural Knowledge and Public Debate in Early VictorianBritainhb:

The Court Artist The Ancestry of the Modern Artisthb:

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Englishness and the Study of Politics The Social and Political Thought of Ernest Barkerhb:

Strategies of Economic OrderGerman Economic Discourse, –hb:

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Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought –hb:

The Social and Political Thought of Bertrand Russell The Development of an Aristocratic Liberalismhb:

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Riches and Poverty An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, –pb:

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... Adversaries and Authorities Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Sciencepb:

The Reportage of Urban CultureRobert Park and the Chicago Schoolhb:

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. (ed.)William Robertson and the Expansion of Empirehb:

Rousseau and GenevaFrom the First Discourse to the Social Contract, –hb:

Pluralism and the Personality of the Statehb:

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Equal Freedom and UtilityHerbert Spencer’s Liberal Utilitarianismhb:

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The Shaping of Deduction in Greek MathematicsA Study in Cognitive Historyhb:

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Measurement in PsychologyA Critical History of a Methodological Concepthb:

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Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth IQueen and Commonwealth –hb:

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. . Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenmenthb:

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Rival EnlightenmentsCivil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germanyhb: