The Tension between the Doctrines of Moral Beings and Hypothetical Necessity, and Its Resolution

Most of the commentators who take into account the notion of hypothetical necessity in their interpretation of Pufendorf also recognize a tension - or even an incoherence - between this notion and the Pufendorfian doctrine of moral beings.

Schulthess is one of the commentators who underline the cosmological motivation:

By his ontological approach to the legal theme, Pufendorf places himself in an original manner in the history of natural law: he is the author who takes into account in the most coherent way the new concept of nature, the mechanistic concept, exhaustively described by quantities. As this new concept of nature does not support the arrangement of deontic modalities in the same way as the old concept of nature did, Pufendorf has had to innovate?⁹

However, a little further, he does acknowledge that, according to Pufendorf, �human nature comprises by way of a lack a requirement for sociability’.^{[920] [921] [922] [923] By way of a lack, indeed, since human nature, i.e. the nature of the natural body, in itself does not imply moral obligations, but given that moral norms have to be imposed upon man, the core norm has to be that of sociability. We find again the notion of hypothetical necessity.}

Darwall, as for him, writes that Pufendorfian nature �if not completely value free, nonetheless can contain no moral value of or on its own'.61 It can contain no moral value of or on its own, but is nevertheless not completely without values. This remains puzzling.

Behme is just as embarrassed when, immediately after having written that Pufendorf â€?reintroduce[s] a kind of natural teleology’, he adds: â€?To be sure, he does not conceive it in the sense of natures containing (and being constituted by) their immanent ends (entelechies), but in the sense of divinely imposed ends being inseparably connected to certain natures because of their common origin in the divine original act'.6²

Renoux-Zagame develops the same idea:

From the first chapters of DeJure naturae etgentium, Pufendorf rigorously divides the entia moralia and the entia physica.... After emphasizing this dichotomy to its breaking point, Pufendorf has to admit that, if the moral rules imposed by God to men are not born ex ipsa re, they are however convenient - they have to be - to the natura of man, and consequently have their foundation in the thing itself.. once the creation of man as a free and rational being had actually been decided, God could not avoid imposing on him obligations suitable to this nature, since it would have been against his perfection to create them different.. Pufendorf thus recreates a â€?natural’ order, which may in some respects be reminiscent of that which was at the basis of the construction of sixteenth-century theologians.6³

If human nature involves a requirement of sociability - even if only by way of a lack -, if moral rules have their foundation in the condition of things them­selves, created by God, this means that Pufendorf does not really adopt the new Cartesian cosmology, a purely mechanistic one.

Schneewind combines the cosmological and theological motivations. The doctrine of moral entities �is a new response to the developing scientific view of the world as neutral with respect to value.... Pufendorf's main reason for taking this line is that it alone allows us to have a proper understanding of God. Only voluntarism leaves God untrammeled'.^{[924] [925] [926]}

The same two motivations can be found in Forde:

Pufendorf charges that [Grotius'] neo-Aristotelian view is incompatible with divine omnipotence, as it postulates a �co-eternal extrinsic principle' that constrains God in creation (1.2.6; 2.3.2).

In the previous quotation, Forde talks twice of man's sociable nature, as if Pufendorf considered man a naturally social or sociable being, in the man­ner of Aristotle or Grotius. Actually, as Palladini has perfectly demonstrated,66 the Pufendorfian conception of human nature is much more Hobbesian than Grotian. Indeed, here is what Pufendorf writes in the famous paragraph in which he expresses the fundamental law of human nature:

It is quite clear that man is an animal extremely desirous of his own pres­ervation, in himself 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 all times malicious, petulant, and easily irritated, as well as quick and powerful to do injury, For such an animal to live and enjoy the good things that in this world attend his condition, it is nec­essary that he be sociable, that is, be willing to join himself with others like him, and conduct himself towards them in such a way that, far from having any cause to do him harm, they may feel that there is reason to preserve and increase his good fortune.... And so it will be a fundamental law of nature, that �Every man, so far as in him lies, should cultivate and preserve toward others a [peaceful sociality] (pacificam socialitatem), [convenient] to the nature and end of the human race’.^{[927] [928] [929]}

As we can see, the requirement of sociability follows from the desire â€?to live and enjoy the good things’, maybe â€?by way of a lack’, if we may borrow the insightful phrase from Schulthess, but certainly conditionally^⁸

Hence could we, with Forde, find it paradoxical that the anti-naturalistic doctrine of moral beings, developed in the first chapter of the DeJure naturae et gentium, may give birth to a treatment of natural law wich remains, all in all, rather classical? The explanation would then be that the innovative poten­tial of the doctrine of moral beings is neutralized by the conditional necessity, which - may we want it or not - replaces the foundation of normativity in nat­ural beings.

On the theological level, Forde states that conditional necessity imposes on God a requirement of coherence that limits his freedom, which contradicts the initial Pufendorfian intention to exalt divine omnipotence.

Irwin is of the same opinion as Forde on this point:

To be distinct from Ockham and Hobbes, Pufendorf needs to say that God is not free not to command actions that accord with rational nature. How, then, can Pufendorf maintain that God is still genuinely free?... It is not clear, then, that Pufendorf has found a plausible version of voluntarism that avoids the aspects of naturalism and Ockhamism that he rejects.⁷⁰

Both Forde and Irwin are claiming that on the theological level there is no intermediate coherent position between classical naturalism (from Aristotle to Grotius, including Cicero and Aquinas) and Ockham's or Descartes' absolute voluntarism. If one wants to exalt divine and/or human freedom, nature must be regarded as devoid of any intrinsic normativity.

We can nonetheless wonder if the challenge laid out for us would not rather be to overcome this opposition between naturalism and voluntarism that, although having been fruitful for the deepening of natural law theories for so many cen­turies, should now be left behind, and if Pufendorf's contribution wouldt not be exactly this? Might not the contribution of hypothetical necessity be intended to point out that intrinsic normativity is not a requirement for moral norms?

This is precisely Hunter's interpretation, whose recent article can do with­out even once mentioning voluntarism or its opposite, naturalism:

The intent of the entia moralia doctrine is to de-substantialize or de- essentialize the domains of ethics and politics..

Hunter concludes that ^lPufendorf transforms human nature into a historical condition whose governing norms must be derived through an exercice of “observational” reasoning that is itself immanent to this condition?²

70 Irwin, Development of Ethics, ιι, pp. 304-305.

71 Hunter, �The Invention of Human Nature', pp. 935-936.

72 Ibid. p. 939.

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