BURLAMAQUI, J.J. The Principles of Natural Law. In which true Systems of Morality and Civil Government are established; and the different sentiments of Grotius, Hobbes, Puffendorf, Barbeyrac, Locke, Clark, and Hutchinson, occasionally considered. Translat

BURLAMAQUI, J.J. The Principles of Natural Law. In which true Systems of Morality and Civil Government are established; and the different sentiments of Grotius, Hobbes, Puffendorf, Barbeyrac, Locke, Clark, and Hutchinson, occasionally considered. Translated into English by Mr. [Thomas] Nugent. London: printed for J. Nourse. 1752.

xvi, [xxiv], 312 pp; some damp staining to outer margins of preliminary leaves, a few gathers embrowned. Contemporary speckled calf with damp stain to upper board, rebacked, contrasting morocco label. With manuscript note to front pastedown Robert Bliss's Circulating Library Oxford.

First published in 1748. It was characteristic of most post-Reformation thought to abandon a teleologicalmetaphysic, and in the juristic writings of Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, natural-law theory was correspondingly reformulated. The nature or essence of man was now identified 'tout court' with the posession of reason, and natural law was held to be whatever is found acceptable by 'recta ratio' or 'sana ratio'. At this stage the logical and epistemological aspects of the theory come totally together - natural law was what reason discovers, and natural law was discovered by reason. Richard Wollheim in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.