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Samuel von Pufendorf and Just War Theory
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Samuel
Pufendorf (1632-1694), born to a Lutheran pastor, in Meissen, Saxony,
was an eminent legal and political theorist and historian. At University
he studied Luther, Aristotle, Hobbes, and Grotius. In 1658 he became
a tutor to the Swedish ambassador to Denmark, but when war broke out
between the two countries he was imprisoned for eight months. He held
chairs at Heidelberg, and Lund in Sweden where he was charged with heresy
in 1684 by Calvinists. The King of Sweden defended Pufendorf and later
appointed him as court historian. As a philosopher he attempted a merging
of empiricism with Cartesian logic—he became one of the most outstanding
social philosophers for seventeenth century Europe. He was an innovator
in applying scientific principles to natural law in Germany, infusing
into the doctrine the philosophies of Hobbes and Grotius and continuing
the intellectual path of freeing philosophy from theological and humanist
premises. Pufendorf
begins his analysis from a natural law premise that individuals should
not harm one another. Peace is a necessary condition for human life,
and humanity alone in the animal kingdom is able to understand the value
of peace. Reason elucidates the obligations and rights of individuals,
and from these premises Pufendorf recognises that war can be necessary
and lawful. The end of war though must be the restoration of peace. The
criteria of just war are the preservation of rights and the protection
of people and property from aggressors. When rights are not acknowledged
then war is justified to claim them and to obtain guarantees of no further
encroachments. A just war may be defensive or aggressive to uphold rights,
but Pufendorf rejects balance of power arguments, since fear of a neighbour's
intentions provides no just cause for war. A
rights analysis of just war is useful in that it provides a standard
against which wars can be judged to be just. Those actions that violate
rights are unjust and those actions that uphold rights are just. Yet
the position is also subject to much criticism, some of which has already
been noted with other authors here, though the question arises as to
what rights Pufendorf is referring to. For Vitoria the primary rights
belong to states and, through implication, not to individuals. Pufendorf
begins on the other side, arguing from an individual rights position,
but this raises the philosophical problem that if rights are held individually
how are wars, which are between collectives, justifiable on the basis
of rights? Are individual rights aggregated to form a new right that
exists for their collective entity? Pufendorf offers no comments for
this deeper critique. Concerning
the activities of armies in war, Pufendorf argues that retaliations
should not be restricted. International law differs from civil law here,
he notes, in that according to civil laws justice is meted out by a
superior authority, of which none exists in the international sphere
of conduct. From this it follows—he argues—that
any measures may be used to stop an enemy, but he acknowledges
that humanitarian considerations should play a part in war. Although
the content of Pufendorf's theories on just war reflect the traditional
doctrine, his demanding of a more scientific basis for natural law creates
a new impetus in international law theory. Freed from theological claims
the body of international law developed apace, with many writers following
his suit to derive what they saw as the necessary scientific foundations
to such law. Pufendorf’s lament of the lack of an international arbiter
is taken later by the philosopher Immanual Kant in his demands for perpetual
peace to be founded upon a world authority.
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