TY - JOUR
T1 - Rousseau, Pufendorf and the eighteenth-century natural law tradition
AU - Silvestrini, Gabriella
N1 - Funding Information:
This liberal reading of Burlamaqui, supported by R. F. Harvey, and consecrated by B. Gagnebin, 183–9, has been followed, apart from by Matteucci, also by R. Derathé, 48, and by S. Zurbuchen, 109ff. M. M. Rossi, ‘Burlamacchi e la storia costituzionale del Settecento’, in Ginevra e l’Italia, a collection of studies promoted by the Waldensian Faculty of Theology in Rome, ed. D. Cantimori, L. Firpo, G. Spini, F. Venturi, V. Vinay (Florence, 1959), 599, attributes to Burlamaqui a limited theory of monarchy and the division of powers as a means of to guaranteeing a free regime.
PY - 2010/9
Y1 - 2010/9
N2 - The relationship between the political theory of Rousseau and modern natural law continues to be the subject of debate, both with regard to Rousseau's faithfulness to the idea of natural law itself and regarding the precise extent of the debt he owed to his predecessors. In this article the author re-examines this relationship by focusing attention on what has been defined as the protestant tradition of natural law. In particular she concentrates on the political and theoretical exercise that Jean Barbeyrac had sought to perform by constructing a particular version of this tradition, namely that of using the science of natural law to promote a policy of tolerance between protestants and to justify the right of citizens to resist catholic sovereigns who denied them religious freedom, as well as the right of protestant countries to come to the aid of persecuted fellow believers. The thesis asserts that Rousseau was fully aware of this exercise, just as he was aware that some of Barbeyrac's ideas had been adopted and reworked by another illustrious Genevan, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, a member of the Small Council, to support anti-populist and antidemocratic politics in Geneva. Viewed in this way it is possible to perceive in Rousseau's political thought not so much a "first crisis" of natural law as an intention to reformulate this science from a republican perspective in order to derive rigorous principles of political law from it. And in developing his republican political theory Rousseau took up and overturned the analysis of democratic sovereignty carried out by Pufendorf, who in opposing the "pro-monarchist" excesses of authors such as Hobbes and Horn had unhesitatingly demonstrated the complete validity of democratic sovereignty.
AB - The relationship between the political theory of Rousseau and modern natural law continues to be the subject of debate, both with regard to Rousseau's faithfulness to the idea of natural law itself and regarding the precise extent of the debt he owed to his predecessors. In this article the author re-examines this relationship by focusing attention on what has been defined as the protestant tradition of natural law. In particular she concentrates on the political and theoretical exercise that Jean Barbeyrac had sought to perform by constructing a particular version of this tradition, namely that of using the science of natural law to promote a policy of tolerance between protestants and to justify the right of citizens to resist catholic sovereigns who denied them religious freedom, as well as the right of protestant countries to come to the aid of persecuted fellow believers. The thesis asserts that Rousseau was fully aware of this exercise, just as he was aware that some of Barbeyrac's ideas had been adopted and reworked by another illustrious Genevan, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, a member of the Small Council, to support anti-populist and antidemocratic politics in Geneva. Viewed in this way it is possible to perceive in Rousseau's political thought not so much a "first crisis" of natural law as an intention to reformulate this science from a republican perspective in order to derive rigorous principles of political law from it. And in developing his republican political theory Rousseau took up and overturned the analysis of democratic sovereignty carried out by Pufendorf, who in opposing the "pro-monarchist" excesses of authors such as Hobbes and Horn had unhesitatingly demonstrated the complete validity of democratic sovereignty.
KW - Barbeyrac
KW - Burlamaqui
KW - Democracy
KW - Division of sovereignty
KW - Protestant natural law
KW - Pufendorf
KW - Right to resistance
KW - Rousseau
KW - Tolerance
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77955281263&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2010.02.003
DO - 10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2010.02.003
M3 - Article
SN - 0191-6599
VL - 36
SP - 280
EP - 301
JO - History of European Ideas
JF - History of European Ideas
IS - 3
ER -