Samuel Pufendorf Disciple of Hobbes: For a Re-Interpretation of Modern Natural Law

First published in Italian in 1990, Fiammetta Palladini’s ground-breaking study of Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694) remains one of the most important discussions of the subject to date. Now available in English for the first time, Palladini’s book cuts through the existing field of Pufendorf studies, laying bare its inherited templates and tacit assumptions. Palladini is thus able to peel back the ‘Grotian’ commentary in which the great thinker had been shrouded, revealing a Pufendorf well-known in the 1680s-a formidable and dangerous natural jurist and political theorist-but doubly obscured in the 1980s and still today, by a philosophical history that flies too high to see him, and by a commentary literature that too often does not like what it sees. David Saunders’ lucid translation carries Palladini’s argument into English with maximum fidelity.

Translation of: Samuel Pufendorf discepolo di Hobbes. Per una reinterpretazione del giusnaturalismo moderno (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990).