Thomas Mautner 122 replaced Pufendorf’s text with his own, his reason is pedagogical. The text is written for university students, not for the learned. But he does not wish to propose a different theory: The learned will at once discern how much of this compend is taken from the writings of others, from Cicero and Aristotle; and to name no other moderns, from Puffendorf’s smaller work, de officio hominis et civis, which that worthy and ingenious man the late Professor Gerschom Carmichael of Glasgow, by far the best commentator on that book, has so supplied and corrected that the notes are of much more value than the text. The reasons of my undertaking to compose anew a compend of this branch of philosophy, after so many such compends have been published by very learned men, were these; Every teacher must use his own judgment . . . The general impression is, then, that subsequent writers adopted the fundamental approach of the founders of the modern natural law tradition; there may have been some changes, but no radical ones. This impression is incorrect. The shift that took place when the theory migrated across the North Sea was radical. But it was not made explicit. We shall now briefly discuss wherein the change consisted, and why it did not receive more attention. ” 10 II In the theories commonly called natural law theories, various theological and teleological notions make an appearance. The natural laws are seen under a dual aspect: they state how certain ends are to be attained, using an aristotelian or a utilitarianframework, but these statements are also taken to be divine laws. Less important, historically, is the rationalistic tendency: certain precepts present themselves to our reason as being self-evident, in the same way as Euclid’s axioms. It is only to be expected that the theories of writers like Grotius and Pufendorf, both tending toward eclecticism (a termof praise in their time!) would include such features. But so far, the distinctive feature of their outlook remains to be mentioned: it is that they employ a concept of rights which are independent of any law for their existence and for their cognition.^^ The distinctive feature of modern natural law theory is that it contains, in this sense, a right-based moral theory.^- This is also how the outlook was widely understood at the time. Only one instance will be adduced in support here: when Schmauss, a professor of law in Göttingen, Introduces the concept of man’s natural freedom, an Innate right to act Hutcheson (1747) pp. i—ii. ” See Olivecrona (1971) and (1977). Mackie uses the expression and refers to R. Dworkin.
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