To the Benevolent Reader
This work calls for a benevolent reader, not by way of rhetorical flourish but as a genuine need. Indeed, a deep indulgence is sought by whoever asks their reader, in the very first instance, to be indulgent towards what will seem a presumptuous assumption: that of keeping synoptically present two authors as ‘weighty’ in many senses as Pufendorf and Hobbes. It was not through presumption or with an unconscious underestimation of the difficulties that I set out on this undertaking. The ‘thing itself’ required it: the idea I had formed of Pufendorf over many years (now more than fifteen) of reading and reflecting – that he was a decidedly hobbesian thinker – could be shown only by an in-depth examination and a close comparison of the writings of these two authors.
This painstaking comparison offers another place in which I must ask my readers to exercise their benevolence and patience. Only by reading with particular attention the detailed analyses of the texts, only by working through to the very end of the lengthy quotations, only by waiting to see ‘how is it going to finish’ and by not leaping to hurried conclusions, only then will the reader be able to understand and assess my arguments. For my part I have tried to be as helpful as possible. I have always hated excessive complexity and false subtlety, inflated verbiage and the technicisms used in the trade, and in this disposition of mine I have taken comfort in the long years of frequenting Pufendorf. In this regard, an interpreter could commit no greater affront than to use with him the language and the mentality against which he fought so passionately. From this point of view, I imagine myself to be an interpreter that Pufendorf would have wanted (even if I am anything but sure he would have looked kindly on a femme savante!). I have therefore tried to be simple and clear. If I have not always succeeded in this aim, I hope that the reader will excuse me, sparing a thought for the difficulty of the material, the intertwining of the threads I was seeking to disentangle and the novelty of the undertaking.
But there is a third aspect in which I must seek my readers’ benevolence and, indeed, generosity. Do not search in this book for that which you want to find there: whether for that which matches your own competences and interests, or that which solicits your pride and confirms your self-esteem. In other words, if you are a philosopher of law and of politics, for instance, do not be annoyed when in this book you find nothing on the social contract or on the forms of government. If you are a specialist in one of the authors or themes considered in this book, do not turn immediately to the index of cited names to check whether you are cited; and if you just cannot resist that temptation (I too almost never resist it!), do not swear an endless vendetta against me if you don’t find your name there.
Regarding the first point, bear in mind that my aim was not to treat every theme, the fundamental ones included, that Pufendorf and Hobbes have in common. My aim rather was to put their relation to the test at two key points: the theory of obligation and the conception of man. All the rest, no matter how important, fundamental, heavy with history and consequences, was not my concern in this context. What interested me far more, on the other hand, was to understand why a certain image of Pufendorf had gained credit: what influences, what suggestions, what truths or what distortions had contributed to the common view of him. It’s here, or more precisely in the second part of the book, that you will find the novel contributions. If in the first part it is indeed a question of my interpretation of material known to all and repeatedly analysed, in the second part I offer you new material: firstly, the comparison never before undertaken of the first and second editions of the De iure naturae et gentium; secondly, a start on comparing the Elementa iurisprudentiae universalis and the De iure; thirdly and fundamentally, a specific and extended critical comparison with Cumberland.
As to citing the secondary literature, I ask the reader to consider that if you are not quoted, this is due neither to prejudice, nor to haughtiness, nor to scorn for your work. Bear in mind that I have not mentioned a single title which I had not read and weighed from first to last line and which did not strictly serve the argument I was developing. This not only means that I have not cited all that I knew from the bibliography alone, but also that I have excluded many of the texts read in the last fifteen years whose specific arguments either were no longer present in my mind or were deemed of no use to the aim of my discourse. Please know, moreover, that I have never cited anyone with a thought, as does happen, about the ‘professors of the subject’ who might prove useful in the next university concorso, or with the idea of taking account of the academic or ideological ‘parish’ to which to belong. If in this arena I have any weakness, it is a weakness I have had in the eyes of the friends and scholars who, all through these years, have kept me in touch with their researches. To them I offer the deepest homage of which I am capable: reading them and taking them seriously.
Finally, I would like my benevolent reader to know when and how this book was written. Preceded by the long years of study as mentioned and by other tasks, the text was composed in a single sweep in the 1985–86 academic year. I wrote it without taking account of the most recent literature, which I had either not read or which I had forgotten. Obviously, certain impressions left by my previous reading and the classic works of pufendorfian historiography must have settled in me. Yet, in the moment of writing my book, Pufendorf and I were alone, with Hobbes, of course, Barbeyrac, Cumberland and the crowd of his contemporary critics who were the subject of my first book. At the end of 1986 the book was ready, typed, but without notes. These had to wait (due to a dramatic personal crisis) until the start of 1988 to begin to take shape. They were written, in parallel with the requisite readings between 1988 and the first months of 1989. And thus the convergences that you and I detect, dear reader, between my theses and those of other authors are all or almost all a posteriori.
This said, dear reader, in the end I do not want to profit from your benevolence: too many pages await you for me to impose on you in addition a long preface. I simply add that on your indulgence, patience and generosity, that is on your benevolence, will depend whether I succeed in avoiding the sad fate reserved, according to E. Wolf, to Pufendorf, one that his interpreter risks sharing: the fate of being ‘too much the jurist for the philosophers, too much the politician for the jurists, too much the historian for the politicians and, finally, too much the philosopher for the historians’.
F.P. (Rome, 18 March 1989).