Thomas Ahnert – författare

George Turnbull’s eighteenth-century translation of A Methodical System of Universal Law was his major effort to convey continental natural law to Britain, thus making Heineccius’s natural jurisprudence more accessible to English-speaking audiences. Turnbull includes extensive comments on Heineccius’s text and also presents his own philosophical work, A Discourse upon the Nature and Origin of Moral and Civil Laws.

Johann Gottlieb Heineccius (1681–1741) studied theology at Leipzig and later law at the newly founded (1694) University of Halle, where he became a pupil of Christian Thomasius.

Thomas Ahnert is a Lecturer in History at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Peter Schröder is Senior Lecturer in the History Department at University College, London.

The works found in Essays on Church, State, and Politics, which originated as disputations, theses, and pamphlets, were direct interventions in the unresolved issue of the political role of religion in Brandenburg-Prussia, a state in which a Calvinist dynasty ruled over a largely Lutheran population and nobility as well as a significant Catholic minority.

Christian Thomasius (1655–1728) was a German philosopher and legal theorist.

Ian Hunter is Australian Professorial Fellow at the Centre for the History of European Discourses, University of Queensland, Australia.

Thomas Ahnert is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Edinburgh.

Frank Grunert is Scientific Collaborator at the Institut für Deutsche Philologie, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Munich.

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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 Institutiones 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.

This volume also 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.

Christian Thomasius (1655–1728) was a German philosopher and legal theorist.

Thomas Ahnert is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Edinburgh.

Please note: This title is available as an ebook for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes.

Christian Wolff’s The Law of Nations is a cornerstone of eighteenth-century thought. A treatise on the philosophy of human action, on the foundations of political communities, and on international law, it influenced philosophers throughout the eighteenth-century Enlightenment world. According to Knud Haakonssen, general editor of the Natural Law and Enlightenment series, “before Kant’s critical philosophy, Wolff was without comparison the most influential German thinker for several decades as well as a major European figure.”

One of the most striking features of The Law of Nations is Wolff’s single-minded dedication to what he calls the “scientific method.” Though different from what we understand by that today, Wolff’s method still focuses on the illumination of truth via a step-by-step, logical examination of what is already known in order to explain what is unknown. As such, The Law of Nations is Wolff’s triumphant synthesis of his scientific method and his observations regarding the operations of nations. It examines the full gamut of national functions: what duties nations have to themselves and to each other, how national ownership should be viewed, how treaties should be formed, and how nations should act in both war and peace.

Though Wolff’s contemporaries in authority did not always accept his ideas—he was banished from the lands of the king of Prussia for seventeen years for his radical notions regarding moral obligation and human free will—his influence ultimately spread across Europe, shaping philosophical study in many German, Dutch, and Scandinavian universities especially.

The Liberty Fund edition of The Law of Nations is the first in English since the 1934 translation by Joseph H. Drake. Thomas Ahnert has revised and corrected that translation for readability and accuracy and has also added footnotes that explain the many references and technical terms Wolff uses throughout the text.

Thomas Ahnert is Reader and Head of History at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Among his publications are The Moral Culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, 1690–1805, an edition of Thomasius’s Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence, and Religion and the Origins of the German Enlightenment.