1 Introduction
The Italian Jesuit Luigi Taparelli dâAzeglio (1793â1862) has been given wide and diverse scholarly attention over decades. Although his fame has been perhaps overshadowed by that of his brother, the Italian patriot Massimo dâAzeglio, Taparelliâs role as a prominent intellectual of Italian Catholic conservativism, as well as his direct contribution to Catholic social thinking, has been widely acknowledged by scholars.1
In addition to this rather well known aspect of Taparelliâs legacy, recent studies have cast a new light on his merits as a natural law theorist. According to Merio Scattola, indeed, Taparelli deserves particular notice in the history of European natural law, because of his efforts at assimilating Protestant natural law theories into Catholic thinking. It is quite odd, one might think, that a champion of Italian Catholicism resorted to Protestant doctrines of ius naturae to reform Catholic natural law â a branch of moral and legal reflection whose delayed development on the Italian peninsula, as Scattola observed, was striking in comparison with other European countries.2
As a matter of fact, Taparelliâs interpretation of Protestant natural law has a precise programmatic intent. Taparelli thought that only by engaging in a direct discussion of Protestant authors was it possible to rise to the challenge posed by the new values of liberalism. Along these lines, he believed that a modernized version of Catholic natural law (focused more on social solidarity than on its secularizing aspects) was going to provide a valuable framework to address those challenges. In fact, whereas Protestant natural law was excessively, or, rather, exclusively, relying on right reason as a source of obligation for natural law, Taparelli maintained that it was time that faith and revelation fitted into the natural law equation again. His Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto (1840â1843)3 thus constitutes a fundamental text that bears witness to this transformation and, more generally, provides evidence of a crucial, transitional moment in the history of the reception of Protestant natural law theories in Italy.
In this chapter, I will address the question of Taparelliâs reprise of the Protestant natural law tradition. Reacting against several attempts to resurrect Thomism within the Jesuit order,4 Taparelli suggested looking at the Protestant natural law tradition instead and, as it were, fighting the enemy from within. However, while Scattola thought that Taparelliâs turn to the Protestant tradition was a progressive stance to modernize the âbackwardnessâ of natural law on the Italian peninsula, I argue that there is more to Taparelliâs enterprise than this. More specifically, in seeking to integrate Protestant sources and themes in his doctrine of natural law, Taparelli wanted to address a much more compelling issue: how could love and divine grace become the object of legal obligation, while still leaving freedom as a fundamental feature of human life and, more specifically, of the social life of Catholics?
I will address this question by looking at Taparelliâs interesting reception of two crucial authors: Christian Wolff and Francisco SuaÌrez. From this perspective, the originality of Taparelliâs contribution consists in correcting Wolffâs doctrine with that of a far more orthodox author of the Catholic natural law tradition, Francisco SuaÌrez. In my view, first, Taparelliâs aim is to reinvent the language of Catholic natural law by borrowing Wolffâs already existing theory and make it more appealing and authoritative to his students and readers, by directly engaging with one of the most systematic authors, and yet one that was âeasilyâ translatable in Catholic terms. In search for a foundation for natural law, Taparelli acknowledged that SuaÌrezâs concept of divine grace did not offer a compelling foundation for universal justice, as love is not something that can be imposed as a divine command but is only recommended by God. If there was a duty to love, people would not be free in the exercise of their will and, potentially, everything they would do âfor loveâ could be attributed to God. Taparelli perceives this as a problem and, instead, implicitly relies on Wolff to provide the duty to universal love (a typically Wolffian concept) as a foundation for universal justice. As I will show, however, Taparelli himself seems reluctant at times to fully acknowledge love as a foundation for legal obligation. The fact that this ambiguity could pose a threat to Catholic orthodoxy was perceived as difficult already by Taparelliâs superiors. Despite these ambiguities, Taparelli managed to create a compelling doctrine of international order, by replacing the âdutyâ to love, which was hardly enforceable, with a more general and passive âdebt of loveâ that nations have towards each other.
This chapter consists of three main parts. In the next section I assess Taparelliâs scholarly and intellectual intentions. I then explain the reasons behind the choice of Christian Wolff as the main vector of Taparelliâs assimilation of Protestant into Catholic natural law. I claim that Taparelli makes use of the Wolffian concepts of perfectio, consensus and concursus as meeting points between the two traditions of Protestantism and Catholic theology. Furthermore, he consistently adjusts Protestant natural law by adding elements of the doctrines of Francisco SuaÌrez, the early modern champion of the Jesuit tradition of ius naturae et gentium. In the following section I show how these choices impact on Taparelliâs reframing of international order and just war.
2 Taparelli: A Jesuit and Public Intellectual Facing the Challenges of Modernity
Prospero dâAzeglio Taparelli was born in Turin in 1793.5 He belonged to a Piedmontese aristocratic family: his father, Cesare, was active in the Napoleonic Wars and, once the French took Piedmont, moved with his family to Florence, where he founded LâApe, one of the first Catholic magazines of the peninsula;6 then, in 1807, a royal decree forced his family to go back to Turin. In 1809, Prospero was supposed to join, under a Napoleonic decree, the Saint Cyr military school, but he was subsequently relieved from attendance, as a result of his fatherâs influential political connections with the pope. He then moved to Rome and in 1814 joined the recently restored Society of Jesus,7 and changed his name to Luigi. Taparelli then became rector of the Jesuit collegium in Novara, and from 1824 to 1829 of Collegio Romano in Rome; after a period in Naples, he became a teacher at Collegio Massimo in Palermo (1833â1850). Sicily became, thus, his elective home.8 In 1850, he founded the influential magazine La civiltaÌ cattolica, which is still published today.
Taparelli witnessed the troubles the Society of Jesus was facing at the dawn of modernity: what role should Catholics have in contemporary society? How could the recently restored Jesuit order react against the dangers of individualism and liberalism?9 Later interpreters such as Antonio Gramsci have condemned the politicization of Catholics as, paradoxically, an extreme form of secularization that was going to have a huge impact on Italian society.10 Irrespective of the accuracy of this historical reconstruction, the Jesuits were clearly trying to fill a void in post-Restoration Italy, as witnessed by the so-called âapostasy of massesâ11 and by the increasing absence of religion from social life. As we shall see, Taparelliâs reprise of natural law was instrumental in the creation of a new vocabulary of social justice capable of making sense of modernity. This vocabulary would ideally bridge the âliberalâ gap between individuals and God by acknowledging, rather, religion as the ultimate telos of society. Taparelliâs project was a successful one, according to Scattola, precisely because it âreplied to modernity with modernityâ.12 Criticizing Johannes Messnerâs thesis that Catholic social thinking was born as a reaction against liberalism, Scattola has claimed that it was, rather, a reaction against Protestantism and that this was visible from the language, agendas and argumentative structures used by authors such as Taparelli.13 This intellectual innovation, voiced by Taparelliâs project of emending natural law, would eventually, after 1848, enable Catholics to participate on an equal footing in debates with liberals and socialists.14
But this renewed, fervid engagement of Jesuits in societyâs most controversial questions attracted its critics. One of the most ferocious was Vincenzo Gioberti, the Turinese clergyman, philosopher and author of Del primato morale degli Italiani (1843), in which he vindicated the historical importance and civilizational mission of the Italian nation. Although Taparelli was initially on good terms with Gioberti, their relationship started to creak under the weight of Giobertiâs acrimonious critique of modern Jesuitism, as expressed in his long essay Il Gesuita Moderno (1846). Condemning any attempt at resurrecting the order, Gioberti saw Jesuits as the enemies of civilization altogether. Furthermore, Gioberti criticized the Jesuitsâ blind subjection to Church authority, while directly accusing Taparelli of confusing the duty to obey superiors with the general, prudential principle of agreeing with the ideas of the wisest.15 Gioberti is here quoting a letter that Taparelli wrote to him on 15 June 1845, where he says that a peculiar trait of Jesuits is docility: this consists ânot so much in stating things one does not believe in, but rather in thinking according to the opinions of the wisest. When the Institute exhorts us to subject our intellect to it, it does not do so to induce us to commit an act of simulation, but, rather, an act of perfectionâ.16 Furthermore, Gioberti accused the Jesuits of pantheism. By acknowledging that God actively concurs in the realization of good acts, they secured their Catholic orthodoxy; nonetheless, they also acknowledged the primacy of human reason and will when it comes to moral deliberation and, by so doing, they âgive man the dignity of a first causeâ.17 This is pivotal in Taparelliâs reflection on natural law, as it calls into question the relationship between grace and freedom, as we shall see.
Apart from theological reasons, there was also political scepticism behind this hatred for Jesuits, as their conservativism was perceived as a threat to Italian liberation movements. However, as a matter of fact, Taparelli and his fellow Jesuits joined revolutionary sides during the uprisings taking place in Palermo in 1848. Gabriele De Rosa has highlighted the uniqueness of this event, which was seen as such already by contemporary observers. Nevertheless, as the liberal movement was gaining momentum on the peninsula, Gioberti criticized the Jesuit involvement in the revolutionary cause. In his view, after the order was suppressed, the Jesuits were so afraid of disappearing from the social and political scene that their involvement in revolutionary uprisings was nothing but an instance of crass political opportunism.18
On the other hand, one of Taparelliâs fellow Jesuits in Palermo, Giuseppe Romano, vindicated the primacy of the Jesuitsâ pedagogical mission to voice revolutionary ideas. Interestingly, he argued, many of those ideas were made available to students precisely through the teaching of natural law. In sum, revolutionary Sicilians owe their intellectual independency to Jesuits:
werenât the Jesuits those who, when no university was teaching natural law, in compliance with Maria Carolinaâs decree forbidding it, werenât they the ones that re-opened natural law chairs and invited students to discussion? If the Jesuit institution was really that retrograde and conservative, how come so many of its former students nowadays have dissenting ideas?19
In Romanoâs portrait, Jesuits were teaching free thinking rather than intellectual subordination to the Churchâs educational, moral and social authority. Furthermore, natural law seemed to play a crucial role in providing students with such tools of intellectual emancipation. That the language of natural law was to give Catholics a new political vocabulary was very clear to Taparelli as well, and his Saggio rapidly became popular in Jesuit colleges and started being adopted as a textbook in many Italian universities. The question was, however, in what ways such political language was to be constructed to enhance social cohesion rather than to disrupt it. As a matter of fact, unlike Romano and his moderate attempt at modernizing the pedagogic mission of the Jesuit order and reconcile it with Giobertiâs invocation to Italian independence, Taparelli, as we shall see, had a much more cautious position on the issue, and was in general less enthusiastic about the role of natural law in voicing those kinds of disruptive claims.
Indeed, Taparelli did not think of national unification as the ultimate goal nor as the starting point of society. The state is just an organism that ensures and guarantees social development,20 as he claimed in his famous Della nazionalitaÌ (On Nationality), which was printed in 1847 unbeknown to Taparelli himself.21 This short essay was supposed to be added to the new edition of the Saggio, and it was not meant to be published as a separate piece. As a result, Taparelliâs essay was misinterpreted as supporting Austrian dominion against Italian independence. In a letter to his brother, Taparelli expresses his concern that his political message is being deliberately misconstrued by his critics. He is also worried that application of natural law to concrete facts can be a double-edged sword, as general principles have different applications depending on the facts they refer to: indeed, ânational questions should be reduced to principles of universal justice, and to the facts that make those principles concreteâ.22 What are these principles of universal justiceâ, then, and on what intellectual and religious foundations do they rest?
3 Wolff versus SuaÌrez: Love as Law?
Taparelli often makes clear in his Saggio, and elsewhere, that the most fundamental aim of his book is âto take Burlamaqui, Romagnosi and Bentham, and other similarly poisonous authors, away from the hands of young studentsâ.23 In the Introduction to the first edition, of 1840, Taparelli vindicates a new metaphysical foundation for the science of natural law, which he, with a distinctively Hegel-like flair, defines as âthe science of the human heart in its long and dangerous journey from the shrine of individual conscience, to the structures of the social architecture it helps to build and sustainâ.24 It is necessary to combine philosophical empiricism and spiritualism into a new metaphysics capable of including facts within theory, rather than just focusing on one or the other exclusively.
Taparelli mentions the fundamental contribution of the French philosopher Victor Cousin in elaborating what he refers to as the novella metafisica.25 Such metaphysics is an eclectic amalgam of doctrines, combining English and French empiricism26 with German spiritualism, one that perfectly reflects the inherent diversity of human nature.27 Whereas the spiritualists insist on focusing on the primacy of human reason over passions, empiricism does the opposite. Only eclecticism can combine the two elements and, âwhile acknowledging the primacy of human reason, it will neither forget nor blame human passionsâ. Accordingly, Taparelli concludes, âthis is the kind of moral theory we support and develop in these pagesâ.28
From this perspective, authors such as Burlamaqui and Johann Gottlieb Heineccius were potentially dangerous because their works were nothing but the expression of âdecadent sensismâ, according to Taparelliâs evocative formulation. In his view, Protestant natural law was either thinking of human life and reason as totally detached from the life of facts and from the structures of social life, or vice versa. Additionally, it lacked a teleological orientation towards good and moral perfection â in other words, God was the great, cumbersome absence from natural law (or was, at least, declared as such) ever since Grotiusâs famous etsi Deus non daretur.
Taparelliâs strategic use of Christian Wolff as a source for his Saggio is an interesting example of how the history of the reception of natural law theories is one of constant hybridization of sources, which are adjusted, deconstructed and reassembled to make sense of the world in a creative yet normatively meaningful way. Although Taparelli denies being a follower of any philosophical innovation or system in particular,29 scholars have identified Wolffâs impact on Taparelliâs theory of natural law.30 Wolff, however, seems to be an occasional and implicit source in Taparelliâs texts â he is barely mentioned explicitly. But why precisely Wolff, and in what does the impact of his theory consist? Is it possible to retrace such influence on Taparelli or did Wolffian interpreters overemphasize the scope and significance of the German philosopherâs legacy? Why would Taparelli resort to a follower of Leibniz, with all the theological implications of such a choice, to rethink the foundations of natural law? Is not such a move not only counterintuitive but also distinctively anti-Catholic (think of Leibnizâs doctrine of pre-established harmony)?
But before turning to the discussion of divine grace and the duty to love, it is also important to emphasize Taparelliâs epistemic interest in reviving SuaÌrezâs and Wolffâs philosophy, against the âdecadent sensismâ of the Protestants:
Some will find it odd that we would include the name of SuaÌrez among those of natural law theorists. The widely shared view on the issue is, rather, that the science of natural law was created by Protestants such as Grotius, Pufendorf, etc. This blunder was generated by confusing the creation of this science with its isolation. It is true that, before these authorsâ contributions, the laws of natural morality where mostly taught together with Christian moral doctrines by theologians, who showed the overlap and the distinctions among the two aspects accordingly. In doing so, they used a method that was generally used back in those times. Such a method refused to isolate entirely one discipline from the other: furthermore, this system is extremely close to the nature of the truth, which is to be conceived essentially as a whole. The analytical need gradually forced interpreters to divide human knowledge into separate disciplines. Perhaps superficiality in research and disaffection for intellectual fatigue have made their way also into the heart of Catholics. Instead, for Protestants, such division was utterly necessary. In fact, since they conceded to every man the right to interpret the Gospel according to their own judgement, they were compelled to create a moral system that was independent from the Gospel, as those who judge shall not depend on those who are judged. They did this so well, that the Gospel became an unnecessary book to them. [â¦] Hence, the fact that SuaÌrez was an eminent theologian does not prevent him from being admired as a profound political philosopher.31
For Taparelli, SuaÌrez provided an example of epistemic unity, against the Protestant analytical tendency to separate different branches of human knowledge to construct an independent system of morality. Interestingly, Wolffâs philosophy presents a similar view of knowledge as an interconnected system held together by metaphysics. From this perspective, and against Scattolaâs thesis of the âbackwardnessâ of Catholic natural law, Taparelli does not seem to think of SuaÌrezâs doctrines as retrograde. Instead, he argues that the âanalyticalâ mind is a tendency to which even his contemporary fellow Catholics are falling victim (âsuperficiality in research and disaffection for intellectual labour have made their way also into the heart of Catholicsâ), one that was exogenous to SuaÌrezâs theological and political doctrines.
However, as many have observed, one of the most important innovations of Wolff consisted in the primacy he gave to psychology. Unlike SuaÌrez, Wolff believed that âthe soul and its affections are objects of metaphysicsâ.32 The importance of psychology not only to understand Wolffâs system but, generally, as a crucial part of the theory of natural law is emphasized by Taparelli himself.33 Rational and empirical psychology become fundamental tools to understand the motives behind human action and to provide a foundation for the obligation of natural law accordingly. Such a foundation relies upon the concept of perfectio, also explicitly deployed by Taparelli in his Saggio.34
In the following I will explain the importance of perfectio in relation to two other key concepts used by Wolff (and, later on, by Vattel)35 and implicitly adopted by Taparelli: consensus and concursus. As far as consensus is concerned, Wolff claims that the aim of the intellect and the will is to be in agreement with each other, and therefore to tend towards perfectio, that is, moral good. The more they are in agreement with each other, the more intellect and will are consentanei to (âin agreement withâ) nature. Additionally, human beings must take care that their own actions are free and, in this respect, have an obligation âto perform intrinsically good actionsâ.36 Indeed, such harmonious agreement among faculties creates consensus, which is a tendency of both the sensitive and the intellectual faculty towards the same object.37Perfectio, thus, is the core of Wolffâs moral and legal theory and it has multiple meanings: (1) consensus of different faculties, as we already pointed out; (2) the purpose of human nature; and (3) the criterion for good moral action â good is what makes us perfect.38
The harmonious agreement among faculties left unexplained why it is so important, and yet so difficult, as we experience from daily life, to achieve such consensus between reason and will. To overcome this potential dichotomy, Wolff relies on the theory of concursus, a multi-layered, pervasive concept used by Wolff to explain why and how we get from consensus to perfectio. There are at least three senses in which Wolff uses the term concursus, and they are all interconnected. First, Wolff speaks of a âconcurrenceâ between God and human actions.39 As we have pointed out, divine intervention does not precede human action but is actually co-causal and concurrent with it. This is because, as the idea of perfectio emphasizes, man is meant to pursue moral good (both because it makes him perfect, and because this decision concurs with the divine plan).
Second, such concursus happens when there is consensus among human faculties, as we have seen, namely when intellect and volition concur towards the same object (which makes it a stable desire).
The third interpretation that Wolff gives to the term concursus is strongly related to the previous two. Wolff uses concursus for our concrete engagement in other peopleâs moral decisions (concursus hominis ad actiones alterius), which is something he claims often happens in reality.40 Such engagement might produce consensus, in cases where we manage to convince other people to adopt behaviour to pursue perfection, or a clash of views and arguments, in which case we do not reach consensus.41
We often find echoes of Wolffâs conceptual vocabulary in Taparelliâs Saggio, despite his few direct references to the German philosopher.42 On these rare occasions, Taparelli rejects Wolffâs idea of founding natural law on the principle of perfection, arguing that there is no such thing as perfectio if it is limited in scope to human affairs only. For their lack of transcendent afflatus, Wolffâs and other Protestant doctrines of natural law end up reducing morality to interest. A âlimited goodâ cannot in itself provide a valid foundation for legal obligation â a greater good is needed for that, Taparelli argues.43
Despite this apparent rejection of Wolffâs doctrines, Taparelli engages in a silent rehash of Wolffian terminology, by toning it down with SuaÌrezâs philosophy whenever it appears too heretical, and, in turn, by re-reading SuaÌrez in a distinctively Wolffian fashion. The fundamental metaphysical role of the law in Taparelliâs project is to bridge the Protestant divide between reason and will, rationality and revelation.44 As he observes: âtruth acts on intelligence, and good acts on the will; law then is a power based on truth and good. As everyone sees, such power is irresistible to the human mind, since the latter cannot but consent to the truthâ (giaccheÌ essa non puoÌ non consentire al vero).45 As such, Taparelli affirms, the human mind has two faculties, knowledge and will. Whereas the former is the object of logic and metaphysics, psychology deals with the study of human will (moral philosophy is, instead, the science that deals with âestablishing the rules of human actionâ). By stressing the importance of psychology (in the Wolffian sense of the term), Taparelli moves on to argue that natural law consists of natural principles that demonstrate how man should make moral use of the faculty of will.46
According to such natural principles, Taparelli observes, everything in nature tends to something, according to the will of the Creator. When someone or something achieves the purpose they tend to, they then fulfil perfection, which essentially means âcompletionâ. When the tendency towards which one orients his will is good, that is called rectitude.47 This is observable not only in individuals, but also in societies and in humankind as a whole, because God has designed all of these to constantly strive for higher degrees of perfection.48 Most importantly, such perfection can be achieved only within society, which provides human beings with the appropriate means for self-perfection. If more human wills strive for the same object (achievement of perfection), this social unity produces a âunity of mindâ, which is the natural principle of âhonest livingâ.49 In other words, if perfection ultimately consists in tending towards the same common good and truth (provided one knows what such things are), perfection lies in the folds of social consensus.50 The Wolffian triad of concepts discussed above is operative here and evidently aimed at constructing the very fabric of Taparelliâs social solidarity.
The sociological claim of observing social facts, rather than founding natural law on mere abstraction, is also reflected in Taparelliâs rejection of the âstate of natureâ doctrine.51 Such doctrine is dismissed as a fictio iuris, âand I donât like to build the most sacred and important aspects of human interaction on a fictionâ, Taparelli eloquently writes.52 Society would only be a disconnected plurality of individuals were not they all tending towards a common goal so as to produce the social consensus that is necessary to achieve truth and goodness. Only if individuals know the truth and aim towards the same good can there be unity between them (they must share, in other words, âunity of purpose deriving from unity of knowledgeâ).53 Taparelli presents an interesting and apt example of a group of papyrologists struggling to interpret the same papyrus in a coherent manner. They all know said papyrus and aim at its correct interpretation, but if they do not âjoin their wills together by expressly showing their intents, so as to show that they all have a common oneâ, their union will never amount to a proper society.54 Human society means the âconcurrence [cospirazione] of many people to the achievement of the same common good, known and searched for by all of themâ. The term cospirazione seems to hint again at another example of the typical Wolffian overlap between consensus, concursus and perfectio, which Taparelli explains cannot really be achieved in a state of nature: men need to know, agree and then intentionally tend towards the same actual purpose, not towards a vague, fictional one.
Taparelli argues that the proper foundation of natural law (and of social cohesion more in general) can only be a duty to love, and by so doing introducing the ideas of charity and social justice into the language of rights. This, however, is no less problematic than acknowledging such a foundational role of perfection. In this sense, the Protestant ethics of perfectibility is compatible with Catholic teleology towards common good: one could easily find in SuaÌrez a similar general drive of perfectio.55 However, the question of whether love provides a basis for legal obligation entails a discussion of grace and the role of God in human affairs that is at the exact crossroads between the two traditions of thought. Additionally, it poses a question of distributive justice, as we will see in a while.
Love is a controversial foundational principle for natural law. If we hold Wolffâs doctrine of concursus to be true, God might be held potentially and co-causally accountable for human deeds of love. Additionally, love cannot realistically be a foundation for law because, according to the traditional dichotomies between perfect and imperfect rights and between commutative and distributive justice, one can only demand respect of mutual obligations. In contrast, acts of love, charity and kindness are simply imperfect duties whose respect is highly recommended to maintain social order, but cannot be imposed by a sovereign. This traditional view of imperfect duties has, somehow, disqualified their legal significance. As a matter of fact, many authors of the natural law tradition seem to attach a value judgement to the dichotomy between perfect and imperfect rights. For example, according to a trajectory of authors that culminates in Emer de Vattel, imperfect rights need to be activated and turned into positive agreements to become perfect obligations, for which it is possible to demand respect.56 There must be, in other words, a corrective to the constitutional âdeficiencyâ of imperfect rights.
Let us address this problem through the eyes of Taparelli. As mentioned, arguing for the primacy of love in providing a foundation for natural law raised the issue of co-causal attribution of human deeds to God.57 This problem was exactly what caused Wolffâs exile from the University of Halle, and its implications for the doctrine of grace were obvious to SuaÌrez.58 In book II, chapter 11 of his De legibus, SuaÌrez asks whether âthe natural law imposes as an obligatory mode of action that mode which springs from the natural love of God, or from charity?â59 SuaÌrez claims that love is inessential to the achievement of individual moral principles, âsince the latter do not all impose, as an obligation, the love of Godâ. Accordingly, humans must be in complete control of their actions, so as to avoid misattributions of responsibility: ânor [â¦] can it be shown that God has laid down for men as ordained for a supernatural end, any special command always to discharge or to observe the precepts of the natural law, out of this sort of love or this reference of oneâs actsâ.60 That the purpose of perfection includes the desire to acquire the love of God does not mean that love is to be considered as a natural law precept. Love is not imposed as an obligation but, rather, is a moral guide designed by God to help us direct our behaviours.
Wolff, on the other hand, in his Ius naturae acknowledges a universal duty to love and formulates it as the positive version of âthe golden ruleâ: âuniversalis omnium hominum amor: uniquisque alterum quemcunque amare debet tantum seipsumâ.61 Moreover, âwe are obliged to charity by the very same law of natureâ.62 This is also true of love among nations, and not just allies.63 However, he argues, âit is against charity and not justice, if one nation fails in its duty toward another. Therefore although it does no wrong, nevertheless it sinsâ.64
The international implications and further articulation of the duty to love will be discussed in more detail in the next section of this chapter. As a general context for Taparelliâs reflection, it is useful to recall a letter that his spiritual father Jan Roothan sent him after having read the first edition of his Saggio. Roothan has two major concerns: first, that the obligation to do good (âil principio: si deve fare il beneâ) seems to give rise to confusion as far as the difference between command and advice is concerned. To remedy this, Roothan recommends changing this principle into a more general âorder should be maintainedâ (si deve serbar lâordine).65 Second, Roothan shows some anxiety concerning the role of grace and Godâs intervention in human affairs. âThe expression âparticipation in divine beingâ, when referring to creatures, and man in particular, seems dangerous, now that pantheism is so in fashion. Unless one explains it according to Aquinas, it seems to me, through similitudeâ.66 It is useful to recall that the accusation of pantheism was also at the very core of Giobertiâs critique of the Jesuits. By acknowledging that God actively concurs in the realization of good acts, Gioberti claimed, the Jesuits perverted the ontological order of beings by giving man âthe dignity of a first causeâ.67
Roothan here suggests that Taparelli corrects these passages accordingly, and in fact they seem particularly nuanced in the later editions of his Saggio. Roothan is referring to a passage in Taparelliâs text where the question of whether God can change divine law is addressed. Taparelli criticizes Pufendorfâs claim that God could have made such law otherwise, just as he could have made man different from what he actually is. Such an argument implies, for Taparelli, that God is not a necessary being and is, therefore, himself subject to the will of some more necessary being (a clearly heretical position). Rather, he suggests that God made man in his own image, and in such a scenario mere participation in the divine being automatically makes divine law more understandable and enforceable for humans. In the 1844 edition of Saggio, Taparelli adds a footnote to keep Roothanâs concerns at bay. The footnote clarifies that âwhen we say that a limited being participates in the infinite, we do not mean this as if he was a particle of it, as dreamt by pantheists; rather, we say so because the effect must necessarily have its being in the cause from which it derivesâ.68
This, however, highlights a controversial conceptual issue with which Taparelli was clearly grappling, as shown by the many oscillations in his vocabulary.
4 Taparelliâs Influential Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto: Nations and International Law
Scholars have welcomed Taparelliâs contribution to international law as one of the first Italian precursors of the League of Nations, or praised the balance between tradition and historical dynamism that Taparelli puts forward in his legal theory based on facts.69 His originality consists precisely in bridging the gap between natural reason and the âpossibilities of historical reasonâ, by envisaging a theory of international legal order based on moral obligation and the political necessities of interaction.70
In stressing the differences between the universal, natural society of mankind and the factual political unity of different nations gathering together, Taparelli also makes use of Wolffâs conceptual vocabulary. Famously, Wolff conceived of the international society as a civitas maxima, a community governed by a fictional legislator and aimed at the promotion and achievement of communal perfection.71
To this effect, Taparelli uses the Italian adjective etnarchico to refer to Christianity as an âethnarchyâ, a society based on faith in both the Church and the Gospel. The âethnarchic societyâ is, thus, an institutional arrangement among nations, based on the idea that âa natural principle of unity existed in Europe, according to which peoples are meant to join forces towards the achievement of a common good of order and justiceâ.72 However, as both SuaÌrez and Wolff well observed, there is a huge leap between perfection as a shared purpose and love of perfection as a legal obligation. This holds particularly true at the international level, where one nationâs ideas of love and perfection do not necessarily coincide with anotherâs convictions. Massively intervening to change that would amount to a violation of sovereign equality, which is why the duty to love is framed by Taparelli essentially as a debt, rather than as an obligation. By recurring to this subtle (again, SuaÌrezian) distinction, Taparelli manages to acknowledge the obligatory force of love, although in a more nuanced and passive way (as the very term âdebtâ suggests), without necessarily demeaning its legal significance.
As mentioned, it is SuaÌrez who distinguishes debitum (âoughtâ) from obligation. As a matter of fact, âin his view, we are not obliged to do good and avoid evil before any command and prohibition. But he recognizes a moral requirement before any command and prohibition; for natural goodness and badness tell us what we ought (debere) to doâ.73 For Taparelli, this âoughtâ is and should be the foundation for natural law, and that is where he corrects SuaÌrez with a touch of Wolffâs Protestantism â if love is not a duty, it surely is a debt we owe to society. SuaÌrez ascribes debere to the realm of morality:
SuaÌrez distinguishes âoughtâ (debere) and duty (debitum) from obligation (obligatio). A class of actions that we ought to do, and that it would be right to do and wrong to avoid, is already fixed by nature; the divine command adds an obligation to do things we already ought to do. [â¦] The obligation imposed by a divine command is binding on our conscience if we abstract from divine command, the principles of natural law do not give rise to an obligation binding on conscience. But even without divine commands, the inherent rightness or wrongness of certain actions implies that we are required (teneri) in conscience to do or avoid them.74
Taparelli, perhaps following Roothanâs suggestion to shift focus from common good to order, argues that international order has to be achieved for âa debt of international loveâ (âdebito di amore internazionaleâ, but also clarifies that âdebitumâ is not just a passive obligation:
[â¦] respect of the negative precept is not enough: we want to also aim at the positive side of such precept and ascertain the limits of such obligation. [â¦] What we will say on the debt of international truth will complete the Saggio also as far as these duties of the will are concerned, since the will is directed by knowledge of the truth. This international veracity, that is to say, this duty to promote in neighbour nations the threefold cognition of supreme good, civic good and common relations, is, thus, the only question left for us to clarify.75
Taparelli acknowledges that this duty calls into question a matter of âhigher historical importanceâ, that is, it asks to what extent a proactive promotion of Catholicism can be included in this duty to promote common good among nations. In principle, he claims that no intervention in another nationâs affairs for religious reasons is allowed per se; it is possible to intervene only in defence of the oppressed.76 What are, then, the âactiveâ international obligations deriving from the debt of international love? Taparelli seems to take a step back and concede that âI would be a fool if I had the ambition to deduce the laws of war from the principle of love and justiceâ.77 Rather, war is, according to nature, a violent defence of order, that is, a just reaction against disorder.
Order, however, can arise only from a proper society with an overarching authority. Taparelli claims that there is an international authority, otherwise there would be no proper society, strictly speaking. How do nations come together to form an international society? Taparelli argues that:
among nations there is an overlap and, yet, at the same time a contrast of interests: therefore, there must be someone to judge on that. Now, the authority of one nation does not have the right to judge the other: there must be, then, a common authority. Since a positive law of nations exists, there must also be an authority that determines it.78
Such authority is essentially polyarchic, made of multiple authorities rather than just one (this resembles SuaÌrezâs idea of ius inter gentes).79 The purpose of such society is different from the one pursued by domestic politics, insofar as it is given by the very same reason behind the international union, and consists in achieving happiness through the defence of oppressed nations, and in promoting cooperation towards universal good. The most perfect of these ethnarchic societies is Christianity,80 to which Taparelli devotes a whole section, as we will see.
Thus, in Taparelliâs formulation, just war amounts, if conducted to fulfil the debt of international love, to an act of international love.81 War is an act of love because it aims at restoring order; ordered societies can declare just war against disordered societies. International disorder amounts to an offence that can be legitimately redressed by war. However, Taparelli observes:
every society inevitably defends order whenever it comes to strict justice; but if we are dealing with perfection, since individuals are not rigorously bound to it, society must not absolutely force it onto them. It can only provide and broaden the means of knowledge, enticement, possibility, proportionally to the three elements of human action, mind, will and external force. [â¦] To do otherwise would be to contravene the first law of social interaction, which consists in the exact measurement of the collision of rights; with such provision one would demand that the force of the advice to perfection overstep the right to freedom. Should such a situation occur, there would be a secret contradiction, as free advice would be confused with the exclusion from liberty. Perfection should be promoted, not commanded.82
So the conundrum returns. Love cannot be commanded, and neither can perfection. Is Taparelli leading his own argument to a dead end? He seems to address this point when dealing with his critique of Grotius:
our doctrine, honest protector of the just liberty of thinking,83 does not concede to equals any superior right on others; [â¦] The right to defend Christianity among foreign peoples should depend on particular facts on which the rights of Christian society build. But Grotius could not understand what such rights were, full as he was of his personal spirit and his Protestant delirium.84
If Grotiusâs natural law was a science of false deduction without a heart, Taparelli suggests that it is the emotional side of humans (values of love, charity and empathy) that makes their lives complete, precisely as much as it makes natural law more perfect and complete as a result. To promote Catholicism, Taparelli argues that using persuasion is a better strategy than force, as a nation only has a duty towards its own citizens, whereas the debitum of international love does not necessarily amount to a duty to command.85 Additionally, charity bears witness to faith, according to Taparelli. His own speculations would not be of much use, he argues, if they did not invite people to a more honest realization of what their interests truly are: âoh, how just a little unity of faith and charity could solve troubles much more than conflicts of power! And, without this unity of faith and charity, what is the point of interest, if not of dividing peoples and triggering war among them?â86
A very apt example of Taparelliâs point comes from his essay Della nazionalitaÌ, where (again, against Gioberti) he discusses the relationship between barbarism and civilization.87 When asked whether it would be right for France to surrender to Algeria, Taparelli replies that this would not be right, not because it is against nature that uncivilized, barbarous and non-Christian nations conquer civilized ones. Rather, the French people should not be submitted to Algeria because the French were the ones who received the offence in the first place, with war being an attempt at mending such offence.
These are the principles I affirmed in my international law doctrine: not the alleged superiority of Christians over barbarians. Being Christians, rather than giving us the right to conquer infidels, rather obliges us to respect their independence more religiously. That would have been something! The Dominican Vitoria pleaded under Philip II, at the times of the Inquisition, against the oppression of Indians! And today, Giobertiâs civilization seeks to justify such oppression in the era of liberty!88
Taparelli concludes with the suggestion that it is highly urgent in his time to reuse these ideas âon the rough outline of an international society presented by Europeâ.89 âSocial loveâ is crucial, because it makes us want for others what we desire for ourselves. Love and altruism produce order among nations.
Without this honest love, nations will only gather together for reasons of interests. They will come together like two fighters, just to injure each other either with hidden frauds or with open violence; but the society of intelligence and will can never be without order and love; and men, reconnected but disunited, will be a corpse of society without soul.90
Taparelli considers that the application of his theories to reality is far from being achieved. However, the society of Christians shows that it is actually possible to live under the rule of love, provided one turns it into a legally binding concept. The originality of Taparelliâs social doctrine of natural law lies in his account of love as a debt, rather than as a duty. People who are in debt are required to give by law. It is, however, our free choice as individuals and as a society to choose God as a âcreditorâ in the first place.91
5 Conclusion: From Love to Order
If one takes the implications of Taparelliâs doctrine of international love seriously, despite its ambiguities, a number of questions arise. First, his insistence on social love as a typical feature of Christian societies echoes Ludwig Feuerbachâs critical claim that Christianityâs assertion of a close relationship between love and faith ends up impairing the very concept of universal love. It is impossible to be at the same time outside of the Catholic faith and within the circle of Christian love â remember Feuerbachâs attack against the falseness of the precept âlove your enemyâ.92 While Taparelliâs idea of social justice relied on the proactive role of Catholics in society, it theoretically implied a social consensus of religious acolytes, one that automatically excludes those who are outside it.
Proactive promotion of these values is a debt that Christians owe to society and nations to each other. Grace is, in other words, no longer a gift: it becomes disposable social currency. But there is, to this day as much as in Taparelliâs times, a question of values. While respect cannot be demanded from acts of mercy, caritas and kindness, Taparelli aptly transforms these âimperfect dutiesâ into debts that members of a society have to fulfil to achieve their perfection and get closer to God. From this perspective, Taparelliâs fear was that, if all sorts of individualistic values were being introduced in the political space, this would eventually favour a certain laissez-faire that resembled the logic of the market and commerce.
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Robert Jacquin, Taparelli (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1943); Miscellanea Taparelli. Raccolta di studi in onore di Luigi Taparelli DâAzeglio nel primo centenario della morte, ed. Pio Cipriotti and JoseÌ M. Diez Alegria (Roma: Edizioni dellâUniversitaÌ Gregoriana, 1964); Gianfranco Morra, La dottrina sociale della Chiesa (Milano: Scuola di dottrina sociale, 1988); Luigi Di Rosa, Luigi Taparelli. Lâaltro dâAzeglio (Milano: Cisalpino, 1991); Giampaolo Dianin, Luigi Taparelli dâAzeglio (1793â1862): il significato della sua opera, al tempo del rinnovamento neoscolastico, per lâevoluzione della teologia morale (Milano: Ed. Glossa, 2000); Thomas C. Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019); Catholic Social Teaching: A Volume of Scholarly Essays, ed. Gerald V. Bradley and E. Christian Brugger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Merio Scattola, âProtestantesimo e diritto naturale cattolico nel XVIII secoloâ, in Illuminismo e Protestantesimo, ed. Giulia Cantarutti and Stefano Ferrari (Milano: Angeli, 2010); Merio Scattola, Prinzip und Prinzipienfrage in der Entwicklung des modernen Naturrechts (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 2017), 183â238.
Luigi Taparelli, Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto. Opera corretta ed accresciuta dallâautore, 5 vols (Palermo: Muratori, 1840â1843; later editions Livorno 1845; Napoli 1850, 2 vols; Roma 1855, 2 vols).
On Taparelli and Thomism, see Francesco Dante, âTomismo e neotomismo a confronto nella Rerum Novarumâ, in Rerum Novarum: EÌcriture, contenu, et reÌception dâune encyclique (Roma: EÌcole Française, 1997), 91â105; Giovanni Vian, âLuigi Taparelli dâAzeglioâ, in Il contributo italiano alla storia del pensiero: storia e politica (Treccani, 2013, http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/luigi-taparelli-d-azeglio_%28altro%29 (accessed January 2023).
On the Piedmontese context, see Mario Riberi, âI Taparelli dâAzeglio durante lâetaÌ napoleonicaâ, in âUne treÌs-ancienne famille pieÌmontaiseâ. I Taparelli negli stati Sabaudi, Quaderni del Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza dellâUniversitaÌ di Torino, 13, ed. Enrico Genta, Andrea Pennini and Davide De Franco (Milano: Ledizioni, 2019), 113â138.
Ibid., 132â133.
The Society of Jesus was suppressed in Portugal, France and Spain in 1773 (in notable contrast with Russia, where the movement had unexpected growth). See Morte e resurrezione di un Ordine religioso. Le strategie culturali ed educative della Compagnia di GesuÌ durante la soppressione (1759â1814), ed. Paolo Bianchini (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2006); The Jesuit Suppression in Global Context: Causes, Events, and Consequences, ed. Jeffrey D. Burson and Jonathan Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Dale K. Van Kley, Reform Catholicism and the International Suppression of the Jesuits in Enlightenment Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019). For the Italian context, see Giacomo Martina, Storia della Compagnia di GesuÌ in Italia (1814â1983) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2003).
See Luigi Taparelli, Legge fondamentale dâorganizzazione nella societaÌ, in G. De Rosa, I gesuiti in Sicilia e la Rivoluzione del â48: con documenti sulla condotta della Compagnia di GesuÌ e scritti inediti di Luigi Taparelli dâAzeglio (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1963), 169; Gabriele De Rosa, âLuigi Taparelli dâAzeglio e i moti del â48 in Siciliaâ, in Miscellanea Taparelli, 115â128.
See Benedetto Croceâs enduring historiographic analysis in Storia dâEuropa nel secolo decimonono (Bari: Laterza, 1932); quoted in Fulvio de Giorgi, Cattolici ed Educazione tra Restaurazione e Risorgimento: Ordini religiosi (Milano: ISU UniversitaÌ Cattolica, 1999), 17â18.
Ibid., 23â24.
Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del Carcere (Torino: Einaudi, 1975), vol. 3, 2086.
Scattola, âProtestantesimo e diritto naturale cattolico nel XVIII secoloâ, 133.
See also Johannes Messner, âDie Erfahrung in der Naturrechtslehre von Taparelliâ, in Miscellanea Taparelli, 303â304.
Ibid.
Vincenzo Gioberti, Il Gesuita Moderno (Losanna, 1846), vol. 2, 116â117: âe peroÌ, ottime Padre Taparelli, io non posso concedervi che lâuso inculcato ai Gesuiti e specialmente ai novizi di sottoporre lâintelletto ai superiori nelle cose che spettano alla Compagnia, e in quelle massime, che sono di maggior rilievo, e peroÌ sâintrecciano piuÌ strettamente coâ suoi interessi, sia un pensare secondo il parere dei piuÌ savi, e quindi possa stimarsi un atto di perfezioneâ.
Ibid., 118: â[â¦] non giaÌ nellâaffermare cioÌ che non si pensa, ma nel pensare, secondo il parere dei piuÌ savi. Quando adunque lâInstituto ci esorta a sottoporre lâintelletto, ci esorta ad un atto di perfezione, non giaÌ ad un atto di simulazioneâ. The âInstituteâ is the Society of Jesus.
Ibid., 459: âRiconoscendo nellâazione di Dio il principio occasionale e cooperante dellâatto buono, evitano lâerrore proscritto e si mantengono cattolici. Ma non eÌ men vero che collocando nellâuomo il principio determinante delle sue deliberazioni virtuose, lo investono di dignitaÌ di cagion primaâ. Also, Gioberti strongly criticizes Christian Wolff: having him as a pupil was the worst disgrace that could happen to Leibniz (239).
De Rosa, I gesuiti in Sicilia e la rivoluzione del â48, 10.
âNon furon essi che mentre le universitaÌ tacevano ancora sui principi del diritto naturale proscritto dalle scuole per decreto di Maria Carolina, ne riapersero le cattedre e vâinvitarono alla discussione? Se lâistituzione gesuitica fosse stata intrinsecamente conservatrice e retrograda, si troverebbero oggi in sÄ±Ì gran numero usciti dalle loro scuole che pensano diversamente?â Giuseppe Romano, âLa causa dei gesuiti in Siciliaâ, 1848, reprinted in De Rosa, I gesuiti in Sicilia, 259. The reference to Maria Carolina of Austria probably concerns the removal of Bernardo Tanucci from the chair of law in Pisa. See Emanuele Salerno, âStare pactis and Neutrality. Grotius and Pufendorf in the Political Thought of the Early Eighteenth Century Grand Duchy of Tuscanyâ, in War, Trade and Neutrality: Europe and the Mediterranean in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Antonella Alimento (Milano: Angeli, 2011), 188â202, at 191. On teaching of natural law in the Jesuit collegia, see Emma Abbate, âLuigi Taparelli dâAzeglio e lâistruzione nei collegi gesuitici del XIX secoloâ, Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane 115 (1997): 467â516.
Gabriele De Rosa, I gesuiti in Sicilia, 23; âLettera di Taparelli a Roberto dâAzeglioâ, Palermo, 28 January 1847, in Carteggi del p. Taparelli dâAzeglio, ed. Pietro Pirri (Torino: Fratelli Bocca, 1933), 205â208.
Luigi Taparelli, Della nazionalitaÌ. Breve scrittura del p. Luigi Taparelli dâAzeglio, rivista e accresciuta notabilmente dallâautore con una risposta del medesimo alle osservazioni di Vincenzo Gioberti (Genova: Tip. F.lli Ponthenier, 1847). On the Italian debate on nationality, see Fabio Di Giannatale, âIl principio di nazionalitaÌ. Un dibattito dellâItalia Risorgimentaleâ, Storia e Politica 6(2) (2014): 234â269. See also Chapter 9 of the present volume, by FreÌdeÌric Ieva.
âLettera di Taparelli a Massimoâ, 25 April 1847, in Carteggi, 235: âle quistioni nazionali debbono ridursi ai principi di giustizia universale, ed ai fatti con cui questa vien concretata: neÌ eÌ lecito oltraggiar la giustizia nelle nazioni steaniere, come non eÌ lecito negli individuiâ.
âLettera di Taparelli a Roothanâ, Palermo, 13 February 1842, in Carteggi, 120. The references are to Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Gian Domenico Romagnosi, and Jeremy Bentham.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto, vol. 1, viii.
Ibid.
Taparelli writes that Locke is the father of empiricism (ibid., v). For the interpretation of Locke as the ideal predecessor of Cousin, see Pasquale Galluppi, Lezioni di Logica e Metafisica, Prima edizione livornese (Livorno: Mazzajoli, 1854), vol. 1, 50â51.
For a discussion of Cousinâs eclecticism, see Michael Albrecht, Eklektik. Eine Begriffsgechichte mit Hinweisen auf die Philosophie- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1994), 605â625.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico, vol. 1, ix.
Ibid., vi.
According to Thomann, âcar aÌ nâen pas douter Taparelli doit beaucoup aÌ Wolff. Au point quâil nâest gueÌre possible de deÌterminer une diffeÌrence doctrinale notable entre les deux auteursâ. See M. Thomann, âIntroductionâ, in Christian Wolff, Gesammelte Werke, II (Hildesheim: Olms, 1962), vol. 25, xlvii. See also Dagmar von Wille, âLa fortuna delle opere di Christian Wolff in Italia nella prima metaÌ del Settecento: la prima edizione veronese degli Opera Latinaâ, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 50(2) (1995): 369â400, at 391; E. Midgley, The Natural Law Tradition and the Theory of International Relations (London: Elek, 1975), 202â207.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico, vol. 2, 185â186.. Thomas Behr claims that social justice, subsidiarity and solidarity (all tenets of Taparelliâs theoretical enterprise) are âan anthropologically corrected borrowing from Pufendorfâ, gesturing towards the natural law tradition of socialitas. See Thomas C. Behr, âLuigi Taparelli on the Dignity of Manâ, in Congresso Tomista Internazionale: Lâumanesimo cristiano nel terzo millennio: prospettiva di Tommaso dâAquino (Roma: Pontificia Accademia di San Tommaso, 2004), 1â7, at 3.
See Christian Wolff, Psychologia Empirica methodo scientifica pertractata, qua ea, quae de anima humana indubia experientiae fide constant, continentur et ad solidam universae philosophiae practicae ac theologiae naturalis tractationem via sternitur (Frankfurt, 1732). Christian Leduc, âSources of Wolffâs Philosophy: Scholastics/Leibnizâ, in Handbuch Christian Wolff, ed. Robert Theis and Alexander Aichele (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2018), 43. Leduc claims this is a rather anti-SuaÌrezian move by Wolff. See also Carlo FantappieÌ, Chiesa Romana e ModernitaÌ Giuridica, vol. 2 (Milano: GiuffreÌ 2008); Alexander Hollerbach, âDas christliche Naturrecht im Zusammenhang des allgemeinen Naturrechtsdenkensâ, in Naturrecht in der Kritik, ed. Franz Böckle and Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (Mainz: Grünewald, 1973), 9â38; as for Taparelliâs defence of scholasticism against accusations of rationalism, see âLettera di Taparelli a Bonettyâ, Palermo, 1848, in Carteggi, 248â260.
See Taparelli, âIntroduzioneâ, in Saggio teoretico, vol. 1, vi; Luigi Cataldi Madonna, âIl connubio della ragione con lâesperienza come fondamento e scopo del programma filosofico wolffianoâ, in La filosofia pratica tra metafisica e antropologia nellâetaÌ di Wolff e Vico, ed. Giuseppe Cacciatore et al. (Napoli: Guida, 1999), 111â129; Claes Petersen, âWhat Has Logic Got To Do With It? On the Use of Logic in Christian Wolffâs Theory of Natural Lawâ, Scandinavian Studies in Law 48 (2005): 310â320; Thomas Kleinlein, âChristian Wolff: System as an Episode?â, in System, Order and International Law: The Early History of International Thought from Machiavelli to Hegel, ed. Stefan Kadelbach, Thomas Kleinlein and David Roth-Isigkeit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 216â239; Ferdinando L. Marcolungo, âChristian Wolff e il progetto di una psicologia filosoficaâ, in Christian Wolff tra psicologia empirica e razionale: atti del convegno internazionale di studi Verona, 13â14 maggio 2005, ed. idem (Hildesheim: Olms, 2007), 15â34.
According to Christian Leduc, in a clear departure from Leibniz, Wolff conceived of predestination as only a âmetaphysical hypothesisâ, in order not to endanger free will and to prevent accusations of necessitarianism (Leduc, âSources of Wolffâs Philosophyâ, 49). Also, concerning Wolffâs admiration of the Jesuits, see Daniel Purdy, âChinese Ethics within the Radical Enlightenment: Christian Wolffâ, in The Radical Enlightenment in Germany: A Cultural Perspective, ed. Carl Niekerk (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 112â130, at 123.
See Francesca Iurlaro, âVattelâs Doctrine of the Customary Law of Nations between Sovereign Interests and the Principles of Natural Lawâ, in The Law of Nations and Natural Law 1625â1850, ed. Simone Zurbuchen (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 278â230. Taparelliâs few references to Vattel are quite critical: more specifically, Taparelli argues, Vattel wrongly considered as interference into the internal affairs of sovereigns the type of influence exercised by the pope, who does not act as a âforeignerâ but as a âHoly Fatherâ; thus, just like fathers are totally entitled to intervene in the life of their children, so can the pope influence sovereigns, and they in turn can be influenced by his infallible authority (Taparelli, Saggio, vol. 5, 208).
Christian Wolff, Philosophia Practica Universalis, Pars Prior (prostat in officina Rengeriana, 1738â1739), § 127.
Wolff, Psychologia Empirica, § 908.
It seems that the notion of perfectio is connected to the medieval concept of bonitas transcendentalis. Leduc suggests that Wolff borrows such notions from SuaÌrez (âSources of Wolffâs Philosophyâ, at 38). See Francisco SuaÌrez, Disputationes Metaphysicae I, I, 2 (Salamanticae, 1597): âad perfectionem ad amplitudinem huius scientiae pertinet ut haec omnia separet ac distinguat, et de universis doceat quidquid certa cognitione de his sciri potestâ.
Christian Wolff, Vernünfftige Gedancken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt: den Liebhabern der Wahrheit mitgetheilet (prostat in officina libraria Rengeriana, 1720), § 1009. This section of the present chapter revises material from Francesca Iurlaro, The Invention of Custom: Natural Law and The Law of Nations, ca. 1550â1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 170â172.
Christian Wolff, Institutiones Juris Naturae et Gentium (Halle, 1750), § 26.
See Marcelo Dascal, G. W. Leibniz: The Art of Controversies (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), 145.
See L. Taparelli, Saggio teoretico (Palermo, 1841), vol. 2, 176; vol. 2 (Palermo, 1843), 581.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico, vol. 1, 40â41.
Giovani Ambrosetti, âDiritto come potere e diritto come ordine nel pensiero del Taparelliâ, in Miscellanea Taparelli, 1â25.
Ibid., 30.
Taparelli adds an Epilogo ragionato del diritto naturale to the fifth and last volume of his Saggio, 5â6.
Ibid., 8: âQuesto fine fu nella mente del Creatore che liberamente lo stabilıÌ: esso daÌ il nome alla facoltaÌ operatrice, giaccheÌ la direzione di una tendenza eÌ determinata dallo scopo. Coroll. 2: Quando una creatura giunge a questo fine, cessa di tendervi; epperoÌ riposa, giaccheÌ il riposo eÌ cessazione di tendenza. Coroll. 3: Nel giungervi ella acquista una perfezione, giaccheÌ perfetto si dice cioÌ che eÌ compiuto: or il giungere eÌ compimento del tendere. [â¦] La perfezione della tendenza si dice rettitudineâ.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico, vol. 3, 189.
âEpilogo ragionato del diritto naturaleâ, in Saggio teoretico, vol. 5, 61: âla perfezione sociale consiste nellâunitaÌ di molti: or lâassenso di tutti al vero produce unitaÌ di mente: dunque produce perfezione di mente. Questa perfezione di mente eÌ il natural principio della onestaÌ del vivereâ.
Ibid. Also, on nationality as a process towards perfection: Taparelli, Della nazionalitaÌ, 14.
On the features of Taparelliâs ârealist social scienceâ, see âIntroductionâ, in Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity, 1â16.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico, vol. 2, 5: âed io non amo fondar sopra una finzione quanto vi ha di piuÌ sacro ed importante nel commercio fra gli uominiâ.
Ibid., 10â11.
Ibid., 9â10.
See note 38 of the present chapter.
See Simone Zurbuchenâs reconstruction in âVattelâs Law of Nationsâ and the Principle of Non-Interventionâ, Grotiana 31(1) (2010): 69â84.
See Ernest Fortin, âSacred and Inviolable: Rerum Novarum and Natural Rightsâ, Theological Studies 53 (1992): 203â233.
On Taparelli, the Jesuits and scholasticism, see âLa scolastica e la politica dei gesuiti: a proposito di una polemicaâ, La civiltaÌ cattolica series 78, 3 (1927): 202; Ernesto Frattini, âTaparelli dâAzeglio e il tradizionalismoâ, in Miscellanea Taparelli, 171â190, at 177. Taparelli explains his take on authority and Suarezâs legacy in his article âLâautoritaÌ spiegata dagli Scolasticiâ, La civiltaÌ cattolica series 2, 11 (1855): 593 ff.
Francisco SuaÌrez, De legibus ac de Deo legislatore, II, 11 (Coimbra, 1612), in F. SuaÌrez, Selection from Three Works, ed. Thomas Pink (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2015), 274.
Ibid., 283.
Christian Wolff, Ius naturae methodo scientifica pertractata, Pars Prima (Halle, 1740â1748), § 619.
Ibid., § 621.
Christian Wolff, Ius gentium methodo scientifica pertractata (Halle, 1749); Christian Wolff, The Law of Nations Treated According to the Scientific Method, ed. Thomas Ahnert (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2017), 122.
Ibid., 124; also, âno nation ought to injure another. For every nation ought to promote the perfection of another as far as it can, consequently ought to do nothing by which the other nation or its condition is rendered less perfectâ, at 130.
âLettera di Roothan a Taparelliâ, Rome, 26 December 1840, in Carteggi.
Ibid.
See note 17 of the present chapter.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico (Napoli, 1844 edition), vol. 1, 40: âdiciamo lâessere limitato partecipazione dellâinfinito, non giaÌ percheÌ ne sia una particella, giusta il sogno deâ Panteisti; ma percheÌ lâeffetto dee necessariamente avere il suo essere nella causa, da cui derivaâ. In support of his thesis, Taparelli quotes Thomas Aquinas (again, to please Roothan) and Fortunato Cavazzoni Pederzini, author of Dialoghi filosofici (Modena: Tipi della R. D. Camera, 1842).
Luciano Perena, âLa autoridad internacional en Taparelliâ, in Miscellanea Taparelli, 405â432; Robert Jacquin, Lâordre international dâapres Taparelli dâAzeglio (Paris: Pedone, 1939).
Perena, âLa autoridad internacional en Taparelliâ, 408â409.
Nicholas Onuf, âCivitas maxima: Wolff, Vattel and the Fate of Republicanismâ, American Journal of International Law 88(2) (1994): 280â303; Kleinlein, âChristian Wolff: System as an Episode?â, 226 ff.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico, vol. 4, 297: âesistea dunque in Europa un principio naturale di unitaÌ che dovea congiungere i popoli al conseguimento del comun bene di ordine e giustiziaâ.
Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study, vol. 2, From Suarez to Rousseau (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 29.
Ibid., 30.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico, vol. 4, 252â253.
Ibid., 258.
Ibid., 261.
Ibid., 289â290.
Ibid.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico, vol. 5, 5.
Taparelli, Corso elementare di natural diritto (Modena: Carlo Vincenzi, 1851), 265.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico, vol. 4, 301â302.
Again, a reference to the intellectual freedom Jesuits were promoting through the teaching of natural law.
Ibid., 303â304.
Taparelli, âEpilogo ragionato del diritto naturaleâ, in idem, Saggio teoretico, vol. 5, 96.
âLettera di Taparelli a Robertoâ, in Carteggi, 131â133.
Taparelli, Della nazionalitaÌ, 2nd edition (Firenze: Pietro Ducci, 1849), 14.
Ibid.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico, vol. 4, 317.
Ibid., 317â318.
On how Taparelliâs notion of duty gave rise to a deeply patriarchal, family-based system of rights, see Udi Greenberg, âCatholicism and Rights: Politics, Economics, and Sexualityâ, in The Cambridge History of Rights, vol. 4, ed. Dan Edelstein and Jennifer Pitts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, II, 27 (âThe Contradiction of Love and Faithâ), https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence (accessed January 2023).