The doctrineof natural law 77 concern matters of political theory, like the origin of the state and of state authority, of equality and inequality et alia. The treatment of these questions, however theoretical and academic, is very much affected by the function of natural law a legitimating ideology. A pure intellectual attitude is lacking. Schefferus’ opinion is telling: he complains that there are too many theories on natural law, for that can bewilder the youth, who are always prone to novelties, and jeopardise the practical use of the doctrine. Every proposition or opinion that denies or could possibly undermine the existence of God, divine punishment, of an obligating law of nature given by God or of the divine sanction of the state and its institutions is criticised or rejected without argument. This happens to Hobbes, among others. His theory is somewhat paradoxically denounced as a denial of the existence of natural law. If man, as Hobbes says, enters into civil society just for the sake of self-preservation and not because he realises that God obligates him to do so, the state will lose all sanction from God and nature and become merely arbitrary, a subject to revolutionary change at any time. This is a dangerous theory, and Hobbes therefore is always rejected, in spite of the fact that his doctrines favoured absolutism. He shares this fate with a long line of other deniers of natural lawfrom the scepticists in antiquity to the abominable Spinoza. Pufendorf, Grotius and the other theorists mentioned before are all within the circle of “sound” philosophers, who recognise the existence of natural law. This is not to say that they escape all castigation, but the tenor of the criticismis friendly. It is a sad thing with Grotius that he has put forward the hypothesis that ius naturae would exist even if there were no God. It is not so much the play with the idea of God’s non-existence that is disquieting about this as the conclusion that God, if he is dispensable from the existence of ius naturae., cannot be its promulgator. And then it would not have any obligating force. Here is one of the great advantages with Pufendorf in comparison with Grotius: since he holds that the law of nature is the product of God’s will, there is no question of its obligative character. Even Pufendorf is corrected on some issues. His concept of socialitas— the principle of peaceful social life—is considered a less appropriate criterion of morality, for the duties towards God cannot be derived from it. If the duty to worship God was derived from socialitas, it would follow that religion existed for the sake of society, which is a preposterous conelusion. At this point the English theorist Richard Cumberland has his great chance, for he suggests another criterion, benevolentia, the benevolence that exists between all intellectual beings, including God. Thereby the duties towards the Almighty are saved.
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