Hugo Grotius

"The aim of this essay is to demonstrate that the penetration and reception of the theories of natural law were linked to the strategies implemented by a small state, whose survival seemed dependent on the application of a neutrality policy capable of safeguarding commercial activity, and somehow even on the evoked foundation of a federal system with other small states.

Works by Antinori (1711) and Averani (1721-22) in particular and, most especially, those by Buondelmonti (1737, 1741 and 1755) reveal that a process of selecting  natural law theories was under way; balanced as a result of the expected European circulation of these Tuscan works, this selection process was sometimes politically oriented towards dealing with the questions of succession, at other times to drawing an up-to-date picture of civil society, and at still other times to advocating the neutrality option and a specific role for neutral nations in international relations.

An early result that emerged by my research is that different members of the ruling class used Grotius’s teaching relating to international relations to promote and pay tribute to the Grand Duchy within the international political society. The image of the Tuscan Grand Duchy appears to have been founded on the steady public appreciation of the principle stare pactis: thanks to this norm of conduct, the Tuscan ruling class tried to earn their small neutral State a reputation for impartiality and, above all, trustworthiness.
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It seems that not so long ago something happened to the concept 'person' as the result of which it has become difficult for it to connote what was legally and historically one of its most common senses: a corporate person (for instance, that of Hobbes's Leviathan). I shall trace some of the movements of the concept of 'person', from its Greek theatrical beginnings, its Roman law days, its theological developments in Boethius and Thomas Aquinas, Grotius's and Hobbes's dealings with it and up to the present day. This sketch will identify certain ideas and concepts that have been rolled into what we now mean by 'person', as well as where they may have come from.

""This paper argues that what Hugo Grotius presented as appetitus societatis in the 1625 edition of De iure belli ac pacis and later identified with oikeiosis corresponds essentially to the Stoic concept of oikeiosis as put forward by Cicero. Whether a specific war is compatible with natural law must according to Grotius be examined in accordance with recta ratio, which does not admit self-preservation as a sufficient criterion. Although Grotius bases his system of natural law norms developed in De iure belli ac pacis on anthropological presuppositions, these are not predominantly the impulse to self-preservation, but rather the anthropological characteristics outlined by the Stoics in their doctrine of oikeiosis. They manifest themselves, above all, in mankind’s social disposition that arises out of his essentially rational nature.

Richard Tuck's view that self-preservation is the foundation of Grotius’s natural law must thus be rejected. The only criterion taken into account under recta ratio is the substantive one of justice. This means that, for Grotius, self-preservation is in accordance with natural law only to the extent that such self-preservation is just.""