Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence, with Selections from Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics) - Softcover

Thomasius, Christian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865975191 ISBN 13: 9780865975194

Publisher: Liberty Fund, 2011

Synopsis

Christian Thomasius’s natural jurisprudence is essential to understanding the origins of the Enlightenment in Germany, where his importance was comparable to that of John Locke’s in England.

First published in 1688, Thomasius’s Institutionum jurisprudentiae divinae (Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence) attempted to draw a clear distinction between natural and revealed law and to emphasize that human reason was able to know the precepts of natural law without the aid of Scripture. Thomasius also argued that his orthodox Lutheran opponents had failed to understand this distinction and thereby had confused reason and Scripture.

In addition to the Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence, this volume contains significant selections from his Fundamenta juris naturae et gentium (Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations), published in 1705. In Foundations Thomasius significantly revised the theory he had put forward in the Institutes, and much of the Foundations therefore is a paragraph-by-paragraph commentary on his earlier ideas.

These works are a companion to Thomasius’s Essays on Church, State, and Politics, and together they provide the first-ever English presentation of this preeminent German thinker.

Christian Thomasius (1655 1728) was a German philosopher and legal theorist. He was a cofounder of the University of Halle, where he was also a professor.

Thomas Ahnert is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Edinburgh.

Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

About this title

Review

The Midwest Book Review
February 2012

There are laws that are laws just beyond the state saying so. Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence with Selections from Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations is a republication of famed jurist and philosopher Christian Thomasius who throughout the seventeenth century contributed greatly to the discussion of law and its meaning and purpose. A major force in the enlightenment, Thomasius's thoughts on natural law remain important reading, and Liberty Fund presents it for the first time in English, expertly done by Thomas Ahnert. Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence is a strongly recommended addition to any law or philosophy collection.

About this edition

• Publisher: Liberty Fund
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0865975191
• ISBN 13: 9780865975194
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 690
• Editor: Ahnert Thomas