The light of conscience : Jean Barbeyrac on moral, civil and religious authority
Jean Barbeyrac (1674-1744) is best known for his annotated French translations of the natural law treatises of Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf and Richard Cumberland and has generally been understood through the prism of his interpretations of these. However, not only was he in fact an independent natural law thinker, who drew eclectically from a vast array of authors, synthesising their ideas to construct his own distinct theory; he also wrote extensively on morals and politics in other genres, works that have received very little attention and never been seen in their coherence with his natural law ideas. This thesis considers Barbeyrac as a thinker in his own right, drawing together all of his major and many of his minor works and situating them within a number of the wider contexts Barbeyrac inhabited: namely, as a Huguenot refugiĂ©, a member of the Republic of Letters and a professional academician. Barbeyrac's central concern was the relationship between moral, civil and religious authority, and the core of his solution was a comprehensive concept of conscience that unified and naturalised man's moral and religious duties and served as the source of authoritative moral judgement. The first three chapters
Bisset, Sophie
C Auxiliary sciences of history (General) ; KZ2260.B37 Barbeyrac, Jean, 1674-1744
The light of conscience : Jean Barbeyrac on moral, civil and religious authority. Jean Barbeyrac (1674-1744) is best known for his annotated French translations of the natural law treatises of Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf and Richard Cumberland and has generally been understood through the prism of his interpretations of these. However, not only was he in fact an independent natural law thinker, who drew eclectically from a vast array of authors, synthesising their ideas to construct his own distinct theory; he also wrote extensively on morals and politics in other genres, works that have received very little attention and never been seen in their coherence with his natural law ideas. This thesis considers Barbeyrac as a thinker in his own right, drawing together all of his major and many of his minor works and situating them within a number of the wider contexts Barbeyrac inhabited: namely, as a Huguenot refugiĂ©, a member of the Republic of Letters and a professional academician. Barbeyrac's central concern was the relationship between moral, civil and religious authority, and the core of his solution was a comprehensive concept of conscience that unified and naturalised man's moral and religious duties and served as the source of authoritative moral judgement. The first three chapters
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