Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

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 Wolff's natural law theory was founded on his rationalist philosophy and metaphysics, which were strongly influenced by the philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Like Leibniz, Wolff was convinced that justice and morality were based on universally valid principles of reason and that these principles were accessible to human understanding without the aid of religious revelation. Wolff did not therefore follow the voluntarist tradition of natural law, which was characteristic of Germany's two other famous natural jurists of the early Enlightenment--Samuel Pufendorf and Christian Thomasius. The laws of nature, Wolff argued, were not just because God had willed them; rather, God had willed them because they were just. According to Wolff, this natural law was the foundation of the law of nations. Wolff's work considered central issues such as the duties of nations toward themselves and other nations, the laws of war and peace, and the laws governing the treatment of diplomatic representatives. With the Liberty Fund edition, Wolff's work, heretofore relatively unknown to the English-speaking world, will again become available to scholars and students alike.