Transitional Figures: Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Pufendorf

In the classical age, everything finds its place in a class of things; all classes are ordered; taxonomy represents the order of the world. Discussion of space exemplifies the transition to the world as a table. Descartes and Leibniz advanced a relational conception of space, while Newton held space to function as a container. This transition in conditions of thought affected the way people thought about the “person” who rules and is subject to rule. While Hugo Grotius’s De jure belli ac pacis conveys a Renaissance sensibility, it adapts a medieval-Aristotelian stance on human faculties to suit moral persons, including political bodies. Pufendorf furthered the Grotian position by positing the natural equality of human beings and working out the idea that rights among equals imply correlative duties. In Leviathan, Hobbes located “artificial persons” in an equally artificial setting to illustrate the logic of rule over territory as a contained space.