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Zusammenfassung

Der Naturrechtslehrer und Staatswissenschaftler Gottfried Achenwall (1719-1772) gehört zu den bedeutenden, wenn auch weniger bekannten Persönlichkeiten der Göt­tinger Aufklärung des 18. Jahrhunderts. Am 20. Oktober 2019 jährte sich sein Geburts­tag zum dreihundertsten Mal. Aus diesem Anlass fand am 14. und 15. November 2019 an der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen eine interdisziplinäre Kurztagung zu Gott­fried Achenwalls Werk statt. Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Themenschwerpunktes tra­gen die Ergebnisse der Tagung zusammen und wollen Achenwalls Stellung in der Göt­tinger Gelehrtengeschichte, vor allem aber seine Bedeutung als einflussreicher Theoretiker des Naturrechts erhellen und kritisch würdigen.

Abstract

This article serves as an introduction to this special issue on Gottfried Achenwall (1719-1772). Section I briefly sketches Achenwall’s intellectual biography, outlines the disciplines he taught at Göttingen and closes by highlighting the importance and extensive use of Achenwall’s textbooks, in particular his Ius naturae, at universities in eighteenth-century Germany. Section II provides an overview of Achenwall’s natural law doctrine as found in the first edition of his natural law textbook, the Elementa iuris naturae (1750), touching on the principle of obligation and the system of duties, innate and acquired rights, the law of societies, public law and the justification of state power. In section III, we turn to Immanuel Kant’s engagement with Achenwall, pointing out general features of Kant’s critical reception of Achenwall by means of a number of examples before discussing particular differences in the justification of legal coercion, the conception of the household society and marriage law, and, finally, the discussion of the right of resistance. Section IV provides a brief overview of the subsequent articles that deal with Achenwall’s theory of natural law.

Abstract

Abstract The Elementa Iuris Naturae of G. Achenwall have been one of the most common and most successful textbooks of natural law at German universities in the 18th century, not­withstanding its lack of originality concerning the foundation of natural law. On the contrary, the foundation given represents something like the (at that time) prevailing doctrine striving to base natural law on human nature as it is empirically conceived. The paper discusses Achenwall's use of this method and shows its considerable difficulties.

Abstract

Achenwall’s textbook on ‘ius naturae’, first published in 1750 and subsequently often reprinted, was certainly one of the most powerful lecture-compendia in the second half of the 18th century in Germany, not at least because of its momentous reception by Kant. If one takes a closer look, it turns out - according to the thesis of the present con­tribution - not to be a finished product from the beginning, but a typical ‘work in progress’. Its incessant process of growth across the various editions is to be demon­strated and followed up here by means of the guiding concept of ‘obligatio’, a key term of natural law in general during the time of the Enlightenment. What will be in detail analysed is the definition, the classification of obligation and its role as the highest prin­ciple. As a result of this investigation we see a change from an ethic of perfection, ori­ginally marked by Wolff, to an ever stronger emphasis on the will of God.

Abstract

In the first edition of his textbook on Natural Law (1750), Achenwall advocates a theory of obligation which reveals that he was a Wolffian before he came from Halle via Marburg to Göttingen in 1748: Obligation is essentially the connection of a free action with a motive. With the third edition of the textbook (1755), Achenwall changes in terms of obligation theory to the camp of the Pufendorfians, who understood obligation essentially as a relationship between two wills, that of the obliged and that of a superior obligor (whereby in natural law God is this obligor). Achenwall herewith explicitly joins the Wolff-criticism of his Göttingen predecessor Gottlieb Samuel Treuer, who in turn followed Jean Barbeyrac. It is this ‘Pufendorfian’ Achenwall - but not the ‘Wolf­fian’ of 1750 - according to whose textbook Kant gives his lectures since the 1770s. However, in 1785, in the Groundwork, Kant replaces the divine will by the pure legis­lative will of the obligated person himself: Autonomy replaces Theonomy - and Wolff’s idiosyncratic concept of ‘obligation as motivation’ finally drops out of the game again.

Abstract

Kant famously distinguished between an internal and an external relationship between humans and he limited law to the external relationship. However, this distinc­tion and limitation was not invented by Kant but the outcome of a long development of late 18th century natural law. One central figure was Gottfried Achenwall, on whose standard book Kant lectured at the University of Koenigsberg. In this text, I show the details of Achenwall’s limitation of natural law to an external relationship, following the different editions from 1750 (1.) up to 1781 (7.). Achenwall enlarged the scope of natural law in the course of these editions and was therefore forced to mention the good resp. God as a last source.

Abstract

The doctrine of imputation is at the centre of Gottfried Achenwall’s theory of natural law. Together with obligation (obligatio), imputation (imputatio) is, according to Ach­enwall, one of the two basic forces of a law. In contrast to Samuel von Pufendorf, he claims that imputation requires a binding law. This article shows how Achenwall’s doc­trine of imputation forms the link between law and free action and finds its form of implementation in the rulings of the courts. Imputation shows in praxi how ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’ are connected in an evaluative judgement, and in this way makes it possible to evaluate a free action in the light of a moral or legal law.

Abstract

In § 116 of Achenwall/Pütter Elementa Iuris Naturae the following possibilities of conflicts of duties are listed: “There can be a conflict 1. of prohibiting laws with each other, 2. of prescribing laws with each other, 3. of prescribing laws with prohibiting laws.” It will be examined in this article, whether the three theses can be made plausible by examples, and especially, whether thesis No. 1 is convincing in relation to the idea that perfect duties (or prohibiting laws) cannot come into conflict with each other. Fur­thermore the thesis of Immanuel Kant in his Metaphysics of Morals will be discussed, that there is no conflict of duties at all, but only a “contradiction of reasons of binding­ness”. Finally, the argument of Achenwall/Pütter, that the well known duty “bring your­self to perfection!” (Latin: “perfice te!”) may come into conflict with duties in respect to others, and that an argument for a right to act against others in cases of necessity can be given in this context (cf. Achenwall/Pütter, §§ 118, 205, 296).

Kapitelvorschau

Kapitelvorschau