‘LUMEN SUPERNATURALE ’ VS ‘LUMEN NATURALE ’: HUMAN RIGHTS AND THEIR RELIGIOUS IMPLICATIONS IN NATURAL LAW IN THE EARLY ENLIGHTENMENT (PUFENDORF – THOMASIUS – WOLFF)

Abstract

In the Middle Ages, the divine order was considered the standard of law. Natural law was thus derived from the divine order. In the Enlightenment, the problem of determining the content of natural law unambiguously, i.e., independently of personal viewpoints, was well known. The natural law doctrine of the Age of Enlightenment, as is broadly agreed in scholarship, founded and prepared the way for the general declarations of human rights. When, with the Renaissance and the beginning of the Enlightenment, religious ties weakened, the consensus among scholars was that a form of argumentation found in natural law becomes more important: human beings had a dignity derived not from God, but from nature and from birth, from which the fundamental human rights to life, freedom and security were then derived. The ‘nature’ of the human being was thus regarded as a source of justification and appeal, as a source of law. In the German-speaking world, Samuel Pufendorf, Christian Thomasius, and Christian Wolff are among the most renowned founders of natural law. I will answer the question of how far the justification of human rights in the natural law of the early Enlightenment manages without instances of religious justification.