The Reception of Pufendorf’s ‘International Thought’ in Eighteenth-Century Germany

Abstract This chapter explores the reception of Pufendorf’s international thought in eighteenth-century German debates. First, it studies the reception and critique of Pufendorf’s ideas by the leading advocate of perfectionist metaphysics (Christian Wolff), who emphasized perfectibility as the destiny of humanity in contrast to willed sociability. Second, the chapter explores the sharpest rejection of Pufendorf’s ‘intellectualist’ idea of sociability, which came from a seminal advocate of the emerging Staatswissenschaften (Johann Jacob Schmauss). Finally, the chapter examines the responses to Pufendorf’s international thought by the leading cameralist (Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi). The eighteenth-century appropriation of Pufendorf’s work was, to a great extent, conditioned by the changing politics, law, and history of the Holy Roman Empire. Once the structure and stability of the sovereign territorial state had become relatively settled, it then became possible to constitute a political and administrative domain whose main concern was commerce and the welfare of the population.