Samuel von Pufendorf

Samuel von Pufendorf (1632 to 1694) was a German jurist and political philosopher who built a systematic theory of natural law and of the duties that bind people living together in society. Born in Saxony and trained at Leipzig and Jena, he held the first chair in the world devoted to the law of nature and nations, at Heidelberg, and later taught at Lund in Sweden. His Elements of Universal Jurisprudence (1660) and On the Law of Nature and of Nations (1672) revised the natural law theories of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes, arguing that the state of nature is one of weak and insecure peace rather than war, and that sociability is the ground of social order. His short handbook On the Duty of Man and Citizen (1673) carried these ideas to students across Europe, and his writing on the German Empire under a pseudonym caused a sensation. He is read today as a precursor of the German Enlightenment and of modern political and social thought.