Bo Lindberg 74 it continued to legitimate itself in religious terms, the state being ordained by God and the king having his power from him, directly or indirectly. Sweden went through this process as well as France, Denmark and Brandenburg, to name the most evident examples. A decisive step towards its fulfilment was the so-called Caroline absolutism, which was established in 1680 and quickly brought about the destruction of the nobility’s political power, the creation of a disciplined bureaucracy and an effective permanent army and a general centralisation in administration, jurisdiction and ecclesiastical matters. It is within this framework, then, that the theory of natural law, and especially Pufendorf’s doctrine, has its main function as a legitimating ideology. This becomes apparent about 1680 in connection with three new circumstances that affected the study of natural law: first: the rise of Caroline absolutism, second, the spread of Pufendorf’s doctrines at the universities, and third, the philosophers’ usurpation of the teaching of natural law. As indicated above, natural law during the first two decades, when Grotius was the leading authority, was the concern of the jurists, and the study was persued mainly by young noblemen who were to become high officials in the service of the state. In the 1680s, however, the professors of the faculty of arts found that Pufendorf was an excellent doctor of moral philosophy and they began to teach morals and politics according to De officio hominis et civis. In this book they saw a substitute for Aristotle’s ethics and politics, the former corresponding to Pufendorf’s officium hominis, the latter to the officiumcivis. This philosophical take-over—which was unsuccessfully opposed by the jurists—made the doctrine of natural law the concern of a much larger number of students. It was no longer a specialised matter for the future elite of the nobility but turned into a standard element in the education of the common clergyman and school-teacher. This was a prerequisite for its ideological function. However, it is not stated explicitly in the sources that the theory of natural law is a better description of the modern state and its politics. The reasons given for the introduction of natural law in the program of the faculty of arts are mainly pedagogical. The doctrine of natural law, the philosophers argued, is a simpler, quicker way for the students to learn morals in private and public life, indeed it is cheaper, since they finish the study of it in a shorter time. Aristotle’s moral philosophy is too theoretical and more adapted to theoretical discussions than to the needs of practical life. This may sound discouragingly trivial to the historian of ideas who bears in mind the fundamental differences between Aristotelian moral philosophy and the modern theory of natural law and looks for confir-
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