Abstract

In Germany, many authors writing about natural law around 1780 expressed the opinion that the whole discipline was to be revised. Consequently, there were both subtle and dramatic changes in many concepts and notions of natural law. Taking three examples – the relation between natural law and morals, the state of nature, and the relations between the individual and the state – my paper deals with two questions: what exactly were the changes in the 1770s and 1780s and why did these changes occur? In order to answer these questions, I draw upon text-books of natural law as well as essays and reviews in journals of that period.Firstly, most authors then thought that natural law should deal with legal rights only and leave aside moral obligations. But these scholars were not able to develop convincing criteria of how to distinguish between "Zwangsrechte" and moral obligations. This distinction was only achieved later by Immanuel Kant and his followers.Secondly, the notion of the state of nature was revised. Most authors of that time realized clearly that it was a purely philosophical hypothesis. Accordingly, they reconstructed its meaning and its methodological and systematic role in natural law. Other authors discarded the whole concept and thought that the true state of nature implied living in the state.Thirdly, the focus of what natural law dealt with consequently shifted: The relations between the individual and the state became the most important subject of natural law. However, opinions were divided. On the one hand, some authors carried on legitimising the political aims and structures of the absolutist state. On the other, more and more authors emphasised that individuals possessed their natural rights even within the state, and they began to develop liberal ideas about the relations between the individual, the society, and the state.But why did all this happen around 1780? In Germany since the 17th century, natural law had dealt with fundamental political and legal questions such as why and how the state had come into being, what forms of government were possible and legitimate, etc. In this sense, natural law was political theory. Therefore, new political opinions had to be expressed in terms of natural law. Around 1780, enlightened absolutist rulers and their bureaucracies wanted to reform social and political life. Legislation – in many cases, codification – was to be one of the most important instruments to achieve reforms. This new development had to be well-founded in theory and had to be justified, and this was achieved in terms of natural law.However, some natural law authors around 1780 began to take the side of the individual against the state. They realised the dangers of the power of the absolutist state and emphasised the rights of the individual. In this sense, they were early examples of the German natural rights theory which dominated natural law in the 1790s