Natural law and Enlightenment in Christian Thomasius' philosophy

• Grant number: 16/08839-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: July 01, 2016
• End date: September 30, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Yara Adario Frateschi
• Grantee: Diego Kosbiau Trevisan
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 16/20649-0 - Christian Thomasius and the German Enlightenment, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

The post-doctoral research proposal aims at investigating the tension between two constituent elements of the political philosophy of German Aufklärung which are presented in an author who is crucial to the period, namely Christian Thomasius (1655-1728). This tension can be formulated as follow: on the one hand the claim to, without the assistance of the theology, ground the law and the political community on the mere authority of human reason not through the revealed law, but instead through a natural law accessible to every rational being, that is, a secular natural law based on the rational nature of every man; and on the other hand the unrestricted submission to the enlightened sovereign, whose authority is absolute and analogous to God's, that is, a political form of domination traditionally known as enlightened absolutism. This aporia or even contradiction arises in Thomasius, but in a way or another permeates all political theory of German Aufklärung, as for instance in Wolff and above all Kant. The research also includes the proposal for translating some Thomasius' writings, more precisely the Fundamenta juris naturae et gentium or Grundlehren des Natur- und Völkerrecht and selections from the Institutiones iurisprudentiae divinae or Drey Bücher der Göttlichen Rechtsgelahrheit. The translation is conceived as a mean to develop the study mentioned above and also to provide to Thomasius' thought access in Portuguese-speaking philosophical tradition. (AU)