IAN HUNTER is Professor of Humanities and Australian Research Council Fellow at Griffith University, Australia. He has published several papers on the history of moral and political thought, most recently Christian Thomasius and the Desacralisation of Philosophy, Journal of the History of Ideas, and The Morals of Metaphysics: Kant's Groundwork as Intellectual Paideia, Critical Inquiry. His most recent book is Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany. - DAVID SAUNDERS is Professor and recently Dean of Arts at Griffith University, Australia. He is the author of several works dealing with the history of legal, aesthetic and political thought. His books include Authorship and Copyright and Anti-Lawyers: Religion and the Critics of Law and State.

'Undoubtedly this collection marks an important step in the historization of the history of political thought on natural law...' - Wolfgang E.J Weber, History of Poltical Thought

• Preface Notes on the Contributors Introduction; I.Hunter & D.Saunders PART I: NATURAL LAW AND CIVIL AUTHORITY The Rule of the State and Natural Law; B.Kriegel The Moral Conservatism and Natural Rights; K.Haakonssen Pufendorf's Doctrine of Sovereignty and its Natural Law Foundations; T.Behme PART II: THE STRUGGLE OVER CHURCH AND STATE Natura naturans : Natural Law and the Sovereign in the Writings of Thomas Hobbes; C.Condren Probability, Punishments and Property: Richard Cumberland's Sceptical Science of Sovereignty; J.Parkin The Prince and the Church in the Thought of Christian Thomasius; T.Ahnert PART III: NATURAL LAW AND THE LIMITS OF SOVEREIGHNTY Civil Sovereignty and the King of Kings: Barbeyrac on the Creator's Right to Rule; P.Korkman Sovereignty and Resistance; F.Grunert From the Virtue of Justice to the Concept of Legal Order; D.Hüning PART IV: NATURAL LAW AND SOVEREIGNTY IN CONTEXT Natural Law and the Construction of Political Sovereignty in Scotland 1660-1690; C.Jackson Self-Defence in Statutory and Natural Law; R.von Friedeburg PART V: EARLY MODERN THOUGHT AND MODERN POLITICS Hobbes and Pufendorf on Natural Equality and Civil Sovereignty; K.Saastamoinen Natural Law, Sovereignty, and International Law; P.Schröder Property, Territory and Sovereignty; D.Ivison Pufendorf and the Politics of Recognition; M.J.Seidler