Just and Sinner Podcast Samuel Pufendorf on Natural Law and Voluntarism
Feb 6, 2026
A lively look at Samuel Pufendorf’s life, from war-torn childhood to clashes in academia. Discussion of his move from theology to law and the thinkers who shaped him. Exploration of his voluntarist take on natural law, sociability as a moral foundation, and his tempering of Hobbes with Christian concerns. Ends with his influence on later Enlightenment thinkers.
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Formative Childhood And Prison Writing
- Samuel Pufendorf fled his hometown as a child during the Thirty Years' War and later left theology for law after rejecting strict Lutheran scholasticism.
- His prison time in Copenhagen gave him the occasion to write the system of law that he taught across Europe.
Voluntarism Replaces Thomistic Natural Law
- Pufendorf rejects Thomistic natural law and instead endorses a voluntarist position tying natural law to divine will and sovereign decree.
- He separates natural law (reason) from moral theology (special revelation) and treats them as distinct domains.
Sociability Is The First Principle
- Pufendorf treats the state of nature as a theoretical construct rather than Hobbes' historical, brutish reality, and insists humans are essentially sociable.
- He builds natural law from sociability and self-preservation, not from isolation or purely selfish drives.
