The Teaching and Formation of Natural Law at the University of Halle. The First Period: 1694–1740

• Applicant: Dr. Martin Kühnel
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 497644336

By the end of the 17th century, modern natural law was established as the central medium of legal, moral and political discourse. At universities and other academic institutions, it became the discipline that formed the political and juridical elites through a grounding in anthropology, politics, jurisprudence and philosophy. Nevertheless, despite extensive research on natural law, little is known either about its teaching or the development and variety of its contents. The focus has been primarily on questions framed in terms of the history of ideas, and this has restricted attention to a few ‘great’ thinkers and to questions which appear relevant from the standpoint of the modern disciplines concerned (e.g. law, philosophy or political science). This approach does not adequately reflect the much more complex nature of the academic teaching of natural law. It is the aim of the present project to close this gap in scholarship as far as it concerns the first decades of the University of Halle and thereby to complement the history of ideas. This is driven by recognition that the University of Halle played a key role in the development and dissemination of natural law across the whole of Europe. In this story the writings of prominent thinkers on natural law such as Thomasius and Wolff and their ‘schools’ have until now occupied centre stage, but this project will illuminate the concrete teaching of the subject, the totality of the teaching body, the precise institutional context and conditions, and the political expectations bearing on the teaching of natural law, along with the theoretical advances directly linked to these factors. Methodically the questions of what natural law was taught by whom, why and with what intention, will be analysed on three levels. Firstly, all the individuals who taught natural law at Halle will be prosopographically investigated and presented. Secondly, the context and conditions provided by the politics of the state and by the University will be explored from the perspective of the history of the institution. This will show what purposes the teaching of natural law at Halle was intended to serve, and what form this teaching was expected to take. Thirdly, specific theoretical aspects of natural law at Halle will be reconstructed from the standpoint of intellectual history. The result will be the first systematic overview of the academic teaching of natural law at Halle considered as a historical phenomenon, taking in its personal and institutional aspects, and its main thematic emphases and contents. New insights with precise details of the teaching of natural law can be expected, especially concerning the extensive influence of less well-known teachers, the great variety in the ideas taught and their relation to the politics of the Brandenburg-Prussian state, and quantitative and qualitative insights into the academic discussion of positive law within the framework of natural law.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants