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6 - Pacts, Language and Property

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2022

Knud Haakonssen
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
Ian Hunter
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
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Summary

For Pufendorf, pacts are the means by which humanity creates the institutions that separate them from the state of nature, in keeping with the natural law command to cultivate society. By pacting people impose new obligations on themselves in addition to those that exist by the law of nature, creating strict rights and duties that enable peace and social cooperation. Analyzing explicit, tacit and implicit pacts Pufendorf considers what counts as signs expressing intention. Language is the original social institution that is logically prior to the agreements about other adventitious states. The language pact curtails the natural liberty to use the faculty of speech as one pleases and gives others the right to require that signs are used in accordance with the communicative duty. There is an analogy with the creation of property, which, similarly, is not a natural quality of things but a moral entity imposed by to overcome conflicting claims upon a world that is naturally common. The last section of the chapter deals with foundations of the price or value of things, the introduction of money, and the interpretation of pacts.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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