The Doctrine of Natural Law in 17th Century Sweden By Assistant Professor PhDBo Lindberg, University of Gothenburg In this paper I will deal with the doctrine of natural law as an academic subject at the Swedish universities, in particular that of Uppsala, in the latter part of the 17th century. Such a study is of little interest from the viewpoint of doctrinal history or intellectual history in general. No major contribution to the development of western moral philosophy or jurisprudence or political theory was made in Sweden, except of course by Pufendorf, but his achievement was not the result of domestic Swedish intellectual life and tradition. This kind of study is valuable, however, if you want to understand the role of the theory of natural law and especially that of Pufendorf’s doctrine in its historical environment. The following survey has reference to Sweden but the doctrine was interpreted and used in much the same way in contemporary Germany, expecially Brandenburg. My sources are mainly academic writings, i.e. dissertations and lectures. This means that we will remain totally within the academic sphere and get no idea of how the arguments and concepts of natural law were applied in practical life by diplomats, statesmen, lawyers and judges. To grasp the influence of natural law on this level is not the purpose of this study. We will stay on the level of theories, which, however, is not a very high one with regard to its intellectual standard. In general, the academic dissertations of those days were not written for a scientific critical purpose but in order to reproduce facts and values already known. This holds true cxpecially in the field of morals and politics, where the ideological significance is more important than in other disciplines. It was a main task of the universities to imbue the students with opinions and concepts that supported the existing social, moral, religious and political order. This legitimating role of the university is especially obvious during the so-called era of Caroline absolutism, i.e. the autocratic regime of the kings Charles XI and Charles XII between 1680 and 1718.
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