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Samuel Pufendorf's seminal work, The Whole Duty of Man, According to the Law of Nature (first published in Latin in 1673), was among the first to suggest a purely conventional basis for natural law. Rejecting scholasticism’s metaphysical theories, Pufendorf found the source of natural law in humanity’s need to cultivate sociability. At the same time, he distanced himself from Hobbes’s deduction of such needs from self-interest. The result was a sophisticated theory of the conventional character of man’s social persona and of all political institutions.
Pufendorf wrote this work to make his insights accessible to a wide range of readers, especially university students. As ministers, teachers, and public servants, they would have to struggle with issues of sovereignty and of the relationship between church and state that dominated the new state system of Europe in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia (1648).
The Whole Duty was first translated into English in 1691. The fourth edition was significantly revised—by anonymous editors—to include a great deal of the very important editorial material from Jean Barbeyrac’s French editions. This was reproduced in the fifth edition from 1735 that is republished here. The English translation provides a fascinating insight into the transplantation of Pufendorf’s political theory from a German absolutist milieu to an English parliamentarian one.

"Of the Price and Value of Things

After Property was introduced into the World, all Things not being of the same Nature, nor affording the same Help to Human Necessities; and every Man not being sufficiently provided with such Things as were necessary for his Use and Service, it was early brought into Practice among Men to make mutual Exchanges of one Thing for another. But because it very often happened, that Things of a different Nature and Use were to be transferred; lest either Party should be a Loser by such Exchanging, it was necessary, by a common Agreement or Consent among themselves, to assign to Things a certain Quantity or Standard, by which those Things might be compar’d and reduced to a Balance between each other. The same also obtained as to Actions, which it was not thought good should be done gratis by one Man for another. And this Quantity or Standard is that which we call Price or Value.
This Price is divided into Common and Eminent; The First is in Things or Actions which come within the compass of ordinary Commerce, according as they afford either Usefulness or Delight to Mankind. But the other is in Money, as it virtually contains the Value of all Things and Works, and is understood to give them their common Estimate."

Samuel Pufendorf

Baron Samuel von Pufendorf  (1632-694) was a German jurist, political philosopher, economist, statesman, and historian. Born in Saxony in 1632, the son of a Lutheran clergyman, he studied at Leipzig and Jena and held the first modern professorship in natural law, at the University of Heidelberg. Pufendorf was successively professor of natural law at Lund in Sweden and Swedish historiographer royal. He ended his career as Prussian court historian and died in Berlin in 1694. In addition to fundamental works in Protestant natural law, much admired by Locke, Pufendorf contributed importantly to German constitutional theory and wrote major historical works.

Samuel Pufendorf was one of the most important figures in early-modern political thought. An exact contemporary of Locke and Spinoza, he transformed the natural law theories of Grotius and Hobbes, developed striking ideas of toleration and of the relationship between church and state, and wrote extensive political histories and analyses of the constitution of the German empire.